King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens

by Edgcumbe Staley

I.

“The little Queen of Bourges,”—so called partly in derision, partly in pity,—but all the same one of the noblest and best Queens who ever shared the sovereign throne of France: “noble,” not so much in gradation of rank as in distinction of character; “best,” or “good,” not in the sense of mock righteousness, but in the interpretation of whole-heartedness.

Marie d’Anjou was the eldest daughter of King Louis II. and Queen Yolande of Sicily-Anjou-Naples-Provence. Born at Angers, October 14, 1404, she and her younger brother, René, four years her junior, grew up to love one another almost distractedly. So intense was this fraternal affection that their solicitous and resourceful mother viewed it with apprehension, fearing its consequences,—if left unchecked or undiverted into a more natural channel,—the cloister. It was no part of the excellent training the Queen provided for her offspring to hide their futures under the garb of religion; she had lofty ambitions for all her children, and those ambitions she lived to see realized.

MARIE D’ANJOU

From a Painting of the School of Jean Fouquet (1460). National Gallery, London

To face page 174

Marie d’Anjou’s betrothal and marriage to Charles de Ponthieu, Dauphin of France, in 1422, was a supreme master-stroke of statecraft which only such a remarkable mother and Queen as Yolande of Sicily-Anjou could effect. She, with all her prescience, could not have forecast the future of France proper and her many sovereign sister States, which was, in its happy fruition, due to that far-seeing nuptial contract. Marie’s son, Louis XI., made France one nation much as she is to-day.

When Queen Yolande so anxiously took charge of the young Dauphin, and had him educated with her own children, she was quite prepared for any mental and physical development in her son-in-law which might be expected to result from his unhappy parentage. No doubt she did what was possible to correct faults of heredity and to develop such latent excellencies as had not been wholly vitiated in the child’s infancy. Still, we may be sure she had a heart full of trouble as she witnessed the degeneration of her son-in-law from paths of probity and virtue.

In truth, the marriage of Princess Marie was, in a strict sense, a sacrifice and an oblation. The mating of her dearly loved daughter, a girl of unusual promise, with a youth of evil ancestry and unworthy predispositions must have cost the devoted mother much.

Marie was remarkable for rare beauty of person—pale, with perfect features; tall, with a graceful figure, and distinguished by her regal carriage.

In personal appearance Charles was unattractive: his figure was insignificant and ill-formed; his head was unduly large; he had large feet and hands, whilst his legs were short and bowed, and this caused an ungraceful gait; his face was sickly-looking and pock-marked, with a prominent nose, a wide and sensual mouth, and a heavy jaw; his eyes were small and somewhat crisscross; he had coarse dark hair and heavy eyebrows. If his destiny had not been a throne, he might just as well have found his career in a stable. With all these personal disadvantages, Charles was naturally warm-hearted and affectionate; he was possessed of a cool judgment, very affable and considerate, and, when roused, a very lion in the way. The marks of his evil mother’s influence never left him; the crushing of his natural inclinations and opportunities in childhood warped and unbalanced his mental calibre.

It was said scoffingly of him by those who were bereft of feeling: “Le Dauphin est un fou, fils d’un insensé et d’une prostituée.”[A] Jean Juvenal des Ursins perhaps went too far in the opposite direction, for in 1433 he wrote in his “Chronicle” concerning the King: “Sa vie est plaisante à Dieu; il n’y-a-en aucun vice.”[B]

[A] “The Dauphin is a poor fool, the son of a madman and a prostitute.”

[B] “His manner of life is pleasant to God; he has no vice.”

The first notice we find of the life of Marie d’Anjou, however, does not refer to her union with Charles VII., but her betrothal, when only five years old, to Jehan de Beaux, Prince of Taranto, her kinsman. He was the son of the Prince of Taranto who accompanied King Louis II., Marie’s father, on his romantic journey to Perpignan, in 1399, to welcome Princess Yolanda d’Arragona. Descended in direct line from Charles, first Duke of Anjou, younger brother of St. Louis IX., his grandfather was Philippe, second son of Charles III. and Marguerite of France. Through the last-named Princess a sad stain besmirched the shield of the silver lilies. Jehanne and Blanche de Luxembourg, daughters of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy, married respectively King Philippe the “Tall” and King Charles the “Fair” of France. Charged with witchcraft, they were imprisoned for life in the Château de Dourdan, where they were tonsured, scourged, and tortured—although they were the most beautiful and most highly cultured women of their day—together with their sister-in-law Marguerite, but she returned to her husband in 1314. Their terrible experiences were made traditional in the family, and, naturally, did not conduce to success in courtship.

No doubt the idea which fixed itself in the minds of Louis II. and Yolande with respect to this betrothal was the strengthening of the claims of Anjou, of the younger line, upon the crown of Naples, by the alliance of the two branches of the house. Why this arrangement was set aside, or when, it is hard to say. Some chroniclers aver that the young Prince was drowned at sea off Taranto; others, that he had different views; and, more likely than all, others attribute the renunciation to the action of Queen Yolande, who, directly she had obtained charge of the person of the young Dauphin Charles, determined a more brilliant match politically, if a less attractive one psychologically.

Possibly Queen Yolande hardly realized, at the date of that auspicious marriage, how its consummation would affect herself. High-toned as she was, and assertive of Anjou’s prestige, she could not know that Queen Isabeau’s absolute declension from rectitude would, by force of contrast alone, throw her own worthy aims into emphatic prominence. That marriage was the opening of the portals of imperial interest to the personal guidance of the strongest mind and will in France. She became actually the power on the throne, not behind it. Her hand directed the issues of life and death between the rival Powers—France and England. Yolande became at once the ruler of France and the dictator of her foreign policy. What has history to say about all this? Nothing, or next to nothing. Historians,—the most narrow-minded and most easily biassed of writers,—have not cared to trace and teach the ethics of the personality of this ruler of men and States.

The genesis of the paramount influence of women in the public and private life of France was undoubtedly in the reign of Charles VII. He was successively in the hands of Isabeau, his unworthy mother; of Yolande, his noble mother-in-law; of Marie, his much-enduring wife; and of Agnes Sorel, his inspiring mistress. Happily for him, he was withdrawn early from the immediate care of Queen Isabeau, but her intrigues later on brought out the latent bad elements of his character. What saving grace was his, was his through Yolande of Sicily-Anjou. His wife and his chief mistress were given him for two distinct purposes: Marie kept the wolf from the door and emboldened her faint-hearted spouse, whilst Agnes cheered his troubled spirit and impelled his motive-power. There is a quatrain of Francis I. which is interesting from the fact that his versification leaves it doubtful whether Marie or Agnes was actually his good genius: he names both in the first line:

“Gentille Marie (Agnès), plus d’honneur tu mérite,

La cause étant de France recouvrer;

Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrer—

Close nonain ou bien dévot hermite.”

“Gentle Marie (Agnes), thou hast gained all honour,

Of France the new life thou wast inspirer;

But thou wast born to adorn the cloister,

Encloséd nun or dedicated sister.”

Marie and René d’Anjou and Charles de Ponthieu were educated together, and for four years or more were inseparable companions. The betrothal of Charles and Marie was effected at the Palace of the Louvre, December 18, 1413, in the presence of the King and Queen of France and of the King and Queen of Sicily-Anjou. Charles VI. was then still King of France, and fully in possession of his senses. His troubles, political and mental, ranged from 1417 to 1422, when he had become no more than nominal Sovereign, driven from place to place, crushed, depressed, and suffering. Until his malady became hopeless, he was noted for his nobility of endurance, his chivalry of deportment, and his unselfish devotion to his duty. His Don Quixotic sort of life, however, was a mixture of smiles and frowns—joys and sorrows. Such a wife and mother as Queen Isabeau proved herself to be was quite enough to shatter the patience and the peace of the most stolid of men. There was not a more unhappy family in all France than that of its principal Sovereign, nor a more miserable home than that of its King.

Still, there were not wanting human touches which paint the character of King Charles VI. in sympathetic colours. In the King’s room at the Castle of Blois is a superb piece of tapestry, among many others, embroidered with the “Story of the Seigneur and Châtelaine de Courrages.” The “Annales Français” recount the following narrative: “The Seigneur de Courrages was called upon by the Parliament of Paris to fight in the ‘Lists’ with a certain Knight, Jehan Le Gris, for the honour of his wife, the Dame de Courrages. During the absence of her spouse in the Holy Land, the fair châtelaine gave her favours to an urgent lover, the Seigneur Le Gris, and he made love to her, quite naturally, in return. King Charles VI. was presiding at a tournament, and he noted the presence of the lady in question, but was amazed at her effrontery; for she was seated, superbly attired, in her state chariot, in view of the whole assemblage, whereas the custom of the time should have found her upon her knees in her closet, praying for her good man. The King despatched a herald to the impudent hussy, with a message that ‘it is inconceivable that anyone lying under so grievous a reproach should assume herself to be innocent till such time as that innocence shall have been made apparent.’ The brazen dame was ordered at once to dismount from her carriage and retire to her manoir. She was unwilling to bow to the royal command, and, hearing of this, the King sent another messenger, who was instructed to conduct the fair and frail delinquent beneath a scaffold, where she was ordered to cry aloud to God for mercy, and to the King for clemency. In the issue of arms, luckily for her, fortune favoured her husband, who unhorsed his adversary, and, after pinning him to the ground with his sword, compelled him to confess the villainies he had committed with his wife. Then the unfortunate man was hurried off to the scaffold,—beneath which Dame de Courrages was humbly kneeling,—and there and then hung up by the neck by way of justification of his miserable sweetheart.” What happened to the frail woman the chronicler has failed to tell; probably the Seigneur de Courrages took his erring wife home and administered a well-deserved flagellation in the privacy of his bedchamber, and condemned her to a period of imprisonment in the family dungeon upon a spare diet of bread and water! Such was the wholesome discipline for marital infidelity in the days of chivalry!

The marriage of Charles, Count of Ponthieu, and Marie, Princess of Sicily-Anjou, was solemnized at St. Martin at Tours, January 15, 1422. It was a year of rejoicing in France, for on May Day her King by descent, Charles VI., and her King by conquest, Henry V., entered Paris riding side by side in a splendid triumph of peace. Charles’s reason had returned to him with the return of happier days, and although the spectre of Isabeau was beside him, he managed to retain his senses and his vigour until October 21, when death mercifully heralded a new reign and a new régime in Paris.

The Dauphin and Dauphine spent their short honeymoon at Loches and Bourges, whence they were called to attend the Kings in Paris, and there they remained till Charles VI. died. Thereafter troubles once more devastated fair suffering France: the peace was broken, and a broken band of fugitives fled the capital. The Court sought refuge at Bourges.

“The King by misfortune in the warres grew so behindhand, both in fame and estate, that amongst other afflictions hee was subject to reproach and poverty, so that he dined in his small chamber attended only by his household servants. Pothou and La Hire, coming to Châteaudun to ask for succour, found him at table with no more than a rump of mutton and two chickens. He had neither wine nor dessert, and only two attendants, whilst his carriage had no relay of horses and only two grooms. He was reproached for his love of fair Agnes (Sorel), but the Bishop of St. Denis reported that hee loved her onely for her pleasing behaviour, eloquent speech, and beauty; and that he never used any lascivious action unto her, nor never touched her beneath the chin.”

The Comptes de la Royne Marie record that the King and Queen were reduced to eat their meals off common pewter dishes, that they had little or no change of linen, and that the Queen sold all her jewels to purchase food and other necessaries. The townsfolk of the neighbourhood as well as the nobility contributed liberally to their Sovereigns’ wants. Jacques Cœur of Bourges in particular rendered them hospitality, for he was accustomed to send in daily the royal supper at his own expense. Cœur was a merchant, a jeweller, and a wine-grower, and waxed rich in trade, but never wavered in his loyalty. He became Charles’s treasurer, but after advancing him nearly 300,000 gold crowns, he was for some unknown reason cast into prison and condemned to execution and the confiscation of his goods. Queen Marie pleaded for their faithful subject, and gained his reprieve, but Jacques Cœur never recovered his liberty nor his property.

A gory stain was dashed upon the lily shield of France when the Duke of Burgundy was basely slain by Tanneguy de Châtel in the King’s presence. He had been one of Charles’s most devoted adherents, for he it was who, in 1418, carried off the youthful Dauphin, wrapped in a piece of arras, for safety to the Bastile, and whence he was allowed to escape to Poitiers. It was a time of terrible disaster. Paris was in open revolution, and all the possessions of the Crown were threatened with destruction. The English were marching all over France unopposed, for the French Court and Government were divided by the feuds of rival leaders. On June 12 the starving populace of the capital burnt the Hôtel de Ville, the Temple, and prison. Women were seized, outraged, and killed, and 1,600 murdered bodies were scattered in the streets and squares. The Count of Armagnac was the chief supporter of the Dauphin’s party, but Queen Isabeau joined hands with Jean “sans Peur,” Duke of Burgundy, against her husband,—alas! now quite imbecile,—and her only son.

A peace was patched up, and it was arranged that the Dauphin and the Duke should meet for mutual satisfaction at Montereau. The latter had no suspicion of foul-play, and Charles had no inkling of what was in de Châtel’s mind. The meeting was arranged upon the stone bridge crossing the Seine, on September 10, 1419. There the Dauphin, in full armour, awaited his rival’s approach. The Duke passed the two barriers on the bridge assured by the words: “Come if you please, Monseigneur. Fear not; the Dauphin is awaiting you.” At the young Prince’s feet the proud Jean knelt and did homage, but Charles put out no hand to raise him graciously nor paid him any compliment, but brusquely exclaimed: “Monseigneur, you and the Queen have disgraced France and me. I command you to leave that wicked woman alone and go back in peace to your dominions.”

The Duke, astounded, rose, and was about to offer some uncomplimentary reply, when he was struck down by Tanneguy de Châtel with his battle-axe, as he hissed out: “Thou art a traitor! Go thy way, base Burgundy!” Twenty swords leaped from their scabbards and finished the dastardly deed, and Charles, shocked beyond expression, mounted his horse and galloped off. Queen Isabeau was at Troyes, where she had been exiled by her son’s advisers, and the tragic death of her confederate roused the whole fury of her nature. She assembled the chief citizens, and made them an impassioned harangue:—

“Consider the horrors, faults, and crimes, perpetrated in this kingdom of France by Charles, soi-disant Dauphin of Vienne. It is here and now agreed that our son Henry, King of England, and our dear nephew, Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, shall not enter into relations with the said Charles.”

The assassination of the Duke of Burgundy weighed heavily upon the conscience of Charles; he never concealed his wish that his mother’s colleague should come by his end, but he never put his desire into exact words.

The year 1422 saw Marie d’Anjou seated, at least metaphorically, upon the throne of France. Both Kings of France died soon after her marriage,—Henry V. on August 31, and Charles VI. on October 21,—and Charles VII. and Marie were proclaimed King and Queen of France at Mehun-sur-Yèvre in Berry on November 10 following. They were crowned in Poitiers Cathedral on Christmas Day, where the new King had established his Parliament.

A BESIEGED CASTLE IN FRANCE

From a Miniature, MS. Fourteenth Century, “Valeur Maxime” British Museum

To face page 184

The King and Queen made many progresses through their circumscribed dominions. The first was in the summer of 1423, when they made a state entry also into Angers, and heard Mass at the Cathedral of St. Maurice. They presented to the Chapter two superb pieces of tapestry, depicting the Old and New Testaments. The Queen’s brother, Louis III., was of course in Italy, but the Duke of Bar-Lorraine and the Duchess Isabelle were there supporting the Queen-mother Yolande in rendering gracious hospitalities; the citizens provided a mystery-play, and the Court a tournament. The royal couple were lodged in the castle, from the gateway of which Queen Marie addressed the assemblage of people: “Vos citoyens et habitans de la ville d’Angiers soyeant toujours loyaux et fidèles à vostre sovereyns, et aussi des beaulx amis vers la couronne de France, laquelle je porte moi même.”[A] Vociferous plaudits hailed this declamation, and both Queen Yolande and Duke René made patriotic addresses.

[A] “You noble citizens and good inhabitants of this worthy city of Angers were ever famous for loyalty and fidelity to your Sovereigns, and, moreover, the best of friends to the Crown of France, which you see I wear.”

Five years later Charles and Marie entered Anjou and took up their residence at Saumur, where the King received the homage of no less a fellow-Sovereign than the Duke of Brittany, this being due to the tactful policy of the Queen-mother. Charles also had a request to place before the loyal Angevines: he wanted money and men to carry on the ceaseless warfare against the English. In this he admirably succeeded, and through Duke René he gained help from Lorraine and Bar besides.

Marie, though the consort of a fugitive penniless King, had a suite worthy of herself and of her parentage and rank; the Queen-mother saw to that. Her Controller was Hardoin de Mailly, and her Master of Horse Jacques Odon de Maulevrier, a devoted friend of her brother, Duke René. The Queen’s four Dames d’Honneur were Catherine Bourgoing, Aimée de Beauvais, Philippe de la Rochefoucault, and Jeanne Sorel. Her Maids of Honour were Marie du Couldray, Jeanne de la Grosse, Catherine de Beauvais, Jeannett la Garrelle, Hervée Catherine de Montplaie, and Jehanne Biardelle, with three quite young girls whose Christian names alone have been preserved—Felize, Geffeline, and Jacquette—perhaps pet names.

Duke René, ever a liberal-minded and open-handed Prince, gave each of his sister’s ladies a robe of richest aigneaulx fur, with crimson satin lining, and twenty skins of martens for bordering their kirtle bodices. Each robe cost 16 florins (= £12), and was supplied by the Queen-mother’s furrier at Angers, one Martin Chebiton.

The immodest fashions set by Queen Isabeau and the ladies of her Court, and their outrageous modes of headgear, did not go unrebuked by the better sort of clergy. A very famous preaching friar, one Thomas Correcte, a Carmelite monk from Brittany, in particular inaugurated a crusade against feminine extravagances through the North of France and in Flanders during the second decade of the fifteenth century. He further strenuously denounced the dignified clergy who kept fashionable mistresses. He was welcomed heartily by the burghers of the towns through which he passed, and conducted to a special pulpit erected in the market-place, adorned with rich hangings and a gigantic crucifix. Guards of honour and musicians were at his service, and, in spite of opposition and natural predilections, the clergy fell into line with the popular fancy, and rang their bells on his arrival. His denunciations were quite in accord with the feelings of the people, but they incited the rougher element to take the law into their own hands. Squads of youths paraded the public thoroughfares in search of errant dames, and no sooner had their gaze alighted upon a lady of degree, coiffured à l’outrance, than a flight of stones, deftly aimed, quickly made havoc of her headgear. The popular cry, “Un hennin! un hennin! à bas les hennins!” produced a panic, so that the women dared hardly sally forth from their own doors. It was said that the friar personally organized these demonstrations, and even paid the lads to disenchant the fair sex by forcibly pulling down their hideous superstructures. At all events, women with dishevelled heads and disordered attire ran hither and thither helpless and defenceless. The worthy and enthusiastic evangelist had, however, an alternative fashion with which modest women might cover their heads and breasts. He prescribed the universal habit of wearing plain chapelles, the ordinary caps of peasant women. The raid, however, ceased to terrify the determined votaries of eccentricity in dress, and, as Monstrelet, the historian, pithily puts it, “Snails, when anybody passes near them, draw in their horns; but when the danger is past they put them forth again.” The hennin, so called by Friar Correcte, became still more gigantic and grotesque, although Queen Marie, backed by her good mother, Queen Yolande, made loud protests and refused their favours to transgressors.

With respect to indecency in dress, the preacher insisted upon running a thick cord between the men and women of his audiences. The mixing of the sexes in public he gravely denounced, and the bareness of women’s breasts and the tightness of men’s hose excited his most eloquent tirades. The reason of the cord he quaintly phrased: “I perceive that sly doings will be going on!” The King of Sicily, Louis III., and Duke René, were quite in accord with the friar’s philippics; but the “King of Bourges” was another sort of man, and much of the coolness which existed between himself and Queen Marie was due to her moderation in dress and quietness of manner. Charles, it was said, chanced to hear the friar one day at Ponthieu, where he was in residence, and ordered him to keep silence and depart. The friar retired to his monastery after a year of eloquence and exertions, but his animadversions upon the lives of the higher clergy led to his being summoned to Rome, to answer to certain charges of breach of monkish discipline and errors of doctrine. The poor man seems to have felt his position keenly, so keenly, indeed, that to escape judgment he jumped out of the window of his cell and decamped. Being quickly captured, he was arraigned before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and condemned to be burnt as a heretic. Perhaps he deserved punishment for his unguarded language, but he paid dearly indeed as a reformer of gay women’s fashions and gross parsons’ passions!

The years 1427 and 1428 saw France plunged in warfare. King Charles shook himself, metaphorically, and registered a vow that he would drive out every “desecrating English dog.” He bestirred himself, and led forlorn hopes here and there, only to meet with disaster; and then he gave way to despair, and declared that he would do no more for France or for himself. Queen Marie, with true Anjou-Aragon grit, chided him with his faint-heartedness, and one day she surprised him greatly by appearing in a full suit of armour and armed, and declared that “If you, Charles of France, will not lead your troops, I will!” Her example was contagious, for within a week scores of loyal, devoted women assumed mail and stood for the weal or woe of France. These heroic doings were noised abroad, and possibly they had effect in a very unexpected quarter, for in 1429 another heroine appeared in armour from the eastern frontier of France, and made good woman’s claim to military prowess. Thus quaintly wrote Monstrelet of her:

“In the course of this year (1429) a young girl called Jehanne, about twenty years of age, and dressed like a man, came to Charles, King of France, at Chinon. She was born in the village of Droimy, on the borders of Burgundy and Lorraine, not far from Vaucouleurs. She had been for some time an ostler and chambermaid at an inn, and had shown much courage in riding horses to water and in other feats unusual for young women to do. She called herself a ‘Maiden inspired by the Divine Grace,’ and said that she was sent to restore Charles to his kingdom.”

Very little has been recorded of what Queen Marie felt and said concerning that strange visitor. Nobody in all that recklessly gay Court at Chinon viewed the coming of the maid of Domremy more eagerly or more hopefully than did she. She had failed to rouse the King to strike a new blow for his throne, it is true, but she anxiously prayed that this heaven-sent village girl might be the means of doing so. The Queen gave La Pucelle a most sympathetic welcome. The mysteries of devotion and the dictates of religion had in her a very reverent disciple. Apartments were prepared for Jeanne’s reception quite near her own boudoir and private oratory, and its priest was placed at her disposal.

If Jeanne was dumbfounded at the spectacle of a King wholly apathetic to the duties of his high station, and of a Court abandoned, in the midst of dire disaster, to all the frivolities of the idle and the dissolute, she had at least one solace. The beautiful and serious face of the young Queen was to her a comfort and a stay. Looking from one bedizened beauty to another in that fatuous assembly, her eyes fastened themselves upon the one figure that was dissimilar to the rest,—the figure of a good woman, the daughter of the good Queen Yolande. She looked to her like what she conceived of her own saintly Margaret, of the Bois de Chènus. Marie received her unsophisticated visitor with emotion. She entered fully into her story, and conversed daily with her in private about herself, her home, her mission, and her “voices,” and thus she gained the girl’s confidence and her love. If Jeanne had conceived profound veneration for Queen Yolande,—she even called her “my St. Catherine,”—her sentiments towards Queen Marie were those of the most tender affection. Marie, so near her own age, so modest, so simple, and so true, became Jeanne’s confidant and loving patroness. To Marie the mere sight of the girl and her frank, girlish ways was quite sufficient, had she sought for proof positive, to dispel from her mind any suspicions which may have been forced upon her about Jeanne’s relations with her dear brother, René de Bar. Of course, she knew him far too well to credit any tales of faithlessness or dishonour on his part. He and she had been, till he was carried off to Bar-le-Duc by the good Cardinal Louis de Bar, the very dearest and most intimate of playmates in and out of school. Their intercourse had never ceased; such never fails between kindred souls, though parted by hemispheres. René was a just man still, and a true knight. Jeanne likened him to her own St. Michael.

All through Jeanne’s ordeals,—first the open scoffs of the courtiers and servitors at Chinon, then the covert jeers of the divines and busybodies at Poitiers, and lastly the base insinuations of libertines and adventurers,—the Queen stood by La Pucelle. Queen Yolande’s panel of matrons found Marie’s tribute of the utmost value; she staked her royal prerogative upon the girl’s absolute chastity, and the prying, posturing Court bowed to her decision.

If Queen Yolande clothed the maid in shining armour within the great Hall of Audience of Angers Castle, on the eve of the advance upon Orléans, Queen Marie knelt with her in prayer in the solemn choir of Angers Cathedral from Vespers to Compline. How much of her strength of will and the promptness of her action Jeanne d’Arc gained from the whole-hearted favour of these two good Queens the world may never know, but this much we all can apprehend: that unselfish human sympathy is a more mobile force than the uncertainties of Providence.

We can never know why Queen Marie was denied the satisfaction of witnessing and sharing in the coronation of Charles at Reims. She was living quietly at Bourges when the King set off for the metropolitical cathedral under the conduct of La Pucelle and of her brother René. She was prepared for the expedition, and her robes of state were ready for the ceremony, when suddenly Charles commanded her to remain where she was, saying that the march was full of dangers and quite impossible for the Queen and her ladies. La Pucelle begged the King to recall his prohibitions, saying that Queen Marie was quite as worthy as was he to receive a crown. The poor Queen put by her finery,—perhaps not altogether sorrowfully,—and went to reflect awhile at Gien upon the untowardness of human affairs in general and the inconsequences of Charles in particular. Her parting with Jeanne was affecting; Queen and peasant embraced each other affectionately—and never more they met.