The dead man had been neither a good brother nor a good prince; with all of those facile graces which might have made him lovable to all men and did make him fascinating to most women he had combined no sterling qualities. He was not cruel; that is the only relatively good trait--and even that but negative--that we can set over against his reckless frivolity and licentiousness, his shameless infidelity and disregard of oaths and the most sacred obligations. He was not mourned in Paris, which was shocked but not grieved at his death; he was not sincerely mourned by the infamous queen whom he had led away from her duty to her pitiful, insane husband; but he was mourned by the woman whom he had most deeply wronged--his wife.
This wife was the lovely Italian, Valentine Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan, who had married Louis in 1389 and was a sharer in the splendors of the gorgeous entry of Isabeau de Bavière into Paris. From the first she had just cause of complaint--and yet never complained--of the infidelity of a husband whom she loved with her whole heart, but whose love she could not retain. Froissart, who was no friend of hers, tells us a most curious and extraordinary story of one of Valentine's rivals, whom Louis had preferred to his wife as early as 1392. It appears that Louis d'Orléans had rashly confided the details of an amour to that Pierre de Craon whom we have mentioned before, and this knight revealed them to Valentine. The young duchess sent at once for the lady to whom Louis was devoting himself: "Wilt thou do me wrong with my lord, my husband?" The woman was abashed, and in her confusion confessed her guilt. Then said Valentine: "Thus it is: I am informed that my lord loveth you, and you him, and the matter is so far gone between you that in such a place and at such a time he promised you a thousand crowns of gold to be his paramour; howbeit, you did refuse it as then, wherein you did wisely, and therefore I pardon you; but I charge you on your life that you commune nor talk no more with him, but suffer him to pass and hearken no more to his commanding." From the treatment he received at the next meeting with his lady-love, Louis discovered that something was amiss, and she finally told him of the interview with Valentine. Louis then went home to his wife, "and showed her more token of love than ever he did before," finally wheedling her into telling him who had been the talebearer. The sequel we know: how Craon was driven from court, and returned to attempt the assassination of De Clisson.
But if her husband did not love her, the king manifested a real and innocent affection for Valentine, his "dear sister," remembering her and asking for her when, in his madness, he knew no other. Yet even out of this there was to come evil for Valentine; for the Duchess of Burgundy, fearing the growth of the Orléans influence over the king, spread evil reports about the innocent relations between Charles and Valentine. Adding to these insinuations an accusation far more dangerous than that of adultery would have been in such a court, the Burgundians asserted that the king's insanity was produced and continued by the power of witchcraft; and this accusation, fastened upon Valentine, obtained such credit that her husband had to remove her from court to a sort of exile in his own dominions. We find even worse accusations credited by the unsympathetic Froissart, who reports that she had unwittingly poisoned her own child in an attempt to poison the dauphin, for "this lady was of high mind, envious and covetous of the delights and state of this world. Gladly she would have seen the Duke her husband attain to the crown of France, she had not cared how."
Through good report and evil report the poor duchess had lived on, loving her husband and leading a life at least far more regular than that of the court, though she possessed the Italian love of the artistic and the beautiful and was very extravagant. The king, now often idiotic when he was not raving, had been turned completely against her. To amuse and distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the Duke of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and mistress. To the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now succeeded Odette. She was little more than a child, but she became mistress as well as playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (filia cujusdam mercatoris equorum daughter of a certain horse dealer), she wears in court history a name better than that she was born to, Odette de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the mad king, called her "la petite reine." She was happy, it seems, and kind to the king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than was quite pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in later years when Burgundy and England were leagued together, but is said to have used her influence over the king rather for France than for Burgundy. Of her we know little more than that she died about 1424, leaving a daughter whose legitimacy was recognized by Charles VII., and who was honorably married to a petty gentleman of Poitou.
When the handsome, elegant, but unfaithful Louis was murdered, Valentine was at Blois with her children; the eldest was but sixteen, old enough to feel the loss, but not old enough to avenge it. But Valentine determined to avenge her husband; her grief gave her energy. She came at once to Paris with her youngest son and her daughter-in-law, that Isabelle de France who was already a widow from the death of Richard II., and now affianced to the young Duke d'Orléans. The king, sane at the time, was inexpressibly shocked by the murder of his brother, and was moved to tears when Valentine came before him to demand justice upon the murderer. He promised to act, and probably really meant what he said, but his mind was not capable of sustained effort. Jean de Bourgogne was making active preparations for a descent upon Paris with a retinue so formidable in numbers as to be an army; and Valentine retired to Blois, to bide her time. Jean, hardly opposed by Isabeau or any of the few who might be supposed either to exercise some authority or to sympathize with the Orléans faction, came to Paris, boldly hired lawyers and quibbling theologians to justify the "death which he had inflicted upon the person of the Duke d'Orléans," and made the poor madman who was king issue letters patent declaring that he, the king, "took out of his heart all displeasure against his very dear and well-beloved cousin of Burgundy for having put out of the world his brother of Orléans."
Isabeau, who had shown herself utterly incapable of action in this crisis, remained at Melun until the arrogant and dangerous Duke of Burgundy had forced matters in this way and had been called away to repress a rebellion of Liège. Then she and her allies, with three thousand troops, entered Paris (August 26, 1408). Valentine came next day, and with her the young Charles d'Orléans, destined to become famous as one of France's sweetest poets, although kept a prisoner in England for twenty-five years. The king being once more incapacitated, it was decided that Isabeau should preside at the hearing of the formal complaint of the Duchess of Orléans. When the mourning widow and the youthful Duke of Orléans came before the council to demand a hearing, their plea was readily granted, for the menacing figure of Jean Sans Peur was no longer there to intimidate Isabeau and the friends of his victim. The next day, before the young Duke of Guyenne, who acted in the place of the king, the legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries employed by Valentine exerted themselves to exculpate Louis d'Orléans from the charges of sorcery and tyranny and to show that Jean de Bourgogne should be punished for the murder. The arguments of the Orléans advocates were far superior to the shallow, sophistical, utterly shameless harangues which had been delivered in defence of Jean. The legal advocate asked, on behalf of Valentine and her children, that Jean be compelled to come humbly to the Louvre and there to apologize to the king and to the widow and her children; that his houses in Paris be razed; that he be ordered to expend great sums in founding churches and convents, in expiation of his crime; and that he be banished beyond seas for twenty years, and, after his return, be not suffered to approach nearer than one hundred leagues to the queen and the Orléans princes.
But Valentine, though she prevailed on the queen and the princes of the council to agree to summon Jean de Bourgogne to trial before the Court of Parliament, was impotent to prosecute her cause. For Jean, after a ferocious suppression of the rebellious citizens of Liège, came boldly back to Paris, was received as a victor and a friend by the people of Paris, and so overawed the other members of the council that the Orléans sympathizers dared not even dream of prosecuting the trial of this unabashed murderer.
Valentine de Milan and her sons retired to Blois, fearing even further outrages from the triumphant Burgundians. Well might she now have justified the pathetic motto which she had assumed at her husband's tragic death: Rien ne m'est plus, plus ne m'est rien,--"There is nothing more for me, nothing matters more." This inscription, which she caused to be placed in the Franciscan Church at Blois, must have borne an added bitterness to her heart when she saw the selfish Isabeau making friends with the murderer of Louis. The wretched queen and the impotent members of the council were glad to make peace with Jean; they accepted his hospitality and cowered before him. Isabeau, caring nothing for the power of the crown, caring nothing for her husband or her children, caring indeed for but one thing, money, eagerly accepted that from the hands still red with the blood of the man she had loved.
With her children about her, Valentine languished at Blois for a year. She had sought out one of Louis's natural sons, for whom she manifested affection and who, she used to say, was her own by rights, and more fitted to avenge his father than any of the other children. Valentine was in this a good judge, for the spirited, ardent lad whom she loved for his father's sake was none other than Jean, Comte de Dunois, afterward famous among the martial heroes of France as "Le Batard d'Orléans." Valentine died on December 4, 1408, and well might they say that she had died of a broken heart; for the one great emotion of her life had been the passionate devotion to one of the most despicable men that ever had a faithful wife--a devotion generous enough, indeed, to excuse even follies and infidelities.
It was well for Valentine that death came when it did, for it saved her from still further sorrows and humiliations. Four months after her death, her unhappy sons were led to Chartres to go through the forms of a solemn reconciliation with their father's murderer. The duke expressed his contrition for "the fact of the murder committed upon Louis d'Orléans, howbeit this was done for the good of the king and the kingdom, as he was ready to prove, if desired." With such insulting phrases the sons were compelled to be satisfied, and they were forced to swear, with tears that they could not restrain, to harbor no ill feelings against their dear cousin of Burgundy, for whom the king, the queen, and the princes of the blood all interceded.