Que avez vous?
J’ay pascience!”
“Patience is mine!
For your ailing and for your health,
Is there anything for which you pine
Openly to gain, or by your stealth,
What would you?
Patience is mine!”
René and Jehanne went to Provence in 1473 in the guise of fugitives. The Angevines deplored excessively this exile; they loved both King and Queen, and Louis and all his works they hated cordially. René saw no other course to follow. He was heavily cast down by family afflictions. Jean, his noble eldest son, was dead; dead, too, were Charles d’Anjou, his brother, and Nicholas, his dear grandson, and Ferri de Vaudémont. He sought peace and consolation, and Provence and the Provençaux offered both most loyally.
The story of Louis’s perfidy may be shortly told. In 1474 René proclaimed Charles de Maine, his nephew, his heir to Anjou-Provence, regardless of the French King’s presumptions. Louis summoned his uncle to Paris to answer before the Parliament. Something of a compromise was come to, for Louis said he should be content for Charles to be proclaimed Duke and Count, but after him he or his heirs would annex both duchy and county to France.