Part 52 (1/2)
The inhabitants of Orleans presented the Duke of Alencon with six casks of wine, the Maid with four, the Count of Vendome with two.[1222]
[Footnote 1222: A. de Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations, p. 51.]
As an acknowledgment of the good and acceptable services rendered by the holy maiden, the councillors of the captive Duke Charles of Orleans, gave her a green cloak and a robe of crimson Flemish cloth or fine Brussels purple. Jean Luillier, who furnished the stuff, asked eight crowns for two ells of fine Brussels at four crowns the ell; two crowns for the lining of the robe; two crowns for an ell of yellowish green cloth, making in all twelve golden crowns.[1223] Jean Luillier was a young woollen draper who adored the Maid and regarded her as an angel of G.o.d. He had a good heart; but fear of the English dazzled him, and where they were concerned caused him to see double.[1224] One of his kinsfolk was a member of the council elected in 1429. He himself was to be appointed magistrate a little later.[1225]
[Footnote 1223: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 112-113.]
[Footnote 1224: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 23.]
[Footnote 1225: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 306.]
Jean Bourgeois, tailor, asked one golden crown for the making of the robe and the cloak, as well as for furnis.h.i.+ng white satin, taffeta, and other stuffs.[1226]
[Footnote 1226: _Ibid._, pp. 112, 114.]
The town had previously given the Maid half an ell of cloth of two shades of green worth thirty-five _sous_ of Paris to make ”nettles”
for her gown.[1227] Nettles were the Duke of Orleans' device, green or purple or crimson his colours.[1228] This green was no longer the bright colour of earlier days, it had gradually been growing darker as the fortunes of the house declined. It had first been a vivid green, then a brownish shade, and, finally, the tint of the faded leaf with a suggestion of black in it which signified sorrow and mourning. The Maid's colour was _feuillemort_. She, like the officers of the duchy and the men of the train-bands, wore the Orleans livery; and thus they made of her a kind of herald-at-arms or heraldic angel.
[Footnote 1227: _Accounts of the Fortress_, in _Trial_, vol. v, p.
259.]
[Footnote 1228: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 106, 259. _Catalogue des Arch. de Joursanvault_, vol. i, p. 129, nos. 603, 607, 619, 645, 772.
Dambreville, _Abrege de l'histoire des ordres de chevalerie_, p. 167.
P. Mantellier, _Histoire du siege_, p. 92.]
The cloak of yellowish green and the robe embroidered with nettles, she must have been glad to wear for love of Duke Charles, whom the English had treated with such sore despite. Having come to defend the heritage of the captive prince, she said that in Jesus' name, the good Duke of Orleans was on her mind and she was confident that she would deliver him.[1229] Her design was first to summon the English to give him up; then, if they refused, to cross the sea and with an army to seek him in England.[1230] In case such means failed her, she had thought of another course which she would adopt, with the permission of her saints. She would ask the King if he would let her take prisoners, believing that she could take enough to exchange for Duke Charles.[1231] Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had promised her that thus his deliverance would take her less than three years and longer than one.[1232] Such were the pious dreams of a child lulled to sleep by the sound of her village bells! Deeming it just that she should labour and suffer to rescue her princes from trouble and weariness, she used to say, like a good servant: ”I know that in matters of bodily ease G.o.d loves my King and the Duke of Orleans better than me; and I know it because it hath been revealed unto me.”[1233]
[Footnote 1229: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 55, 258.]
[Footnote 1230: _Ibid._, p. 254.]
[Footnote 1231: _Ibid._, p. 133.]
[Footnote 1232: _Ibid._, pp. 133, 254.]
[Footnote 1233: _Ibid._, p. 258.]
Then, speaking of the captive duke she would say: ”My Voices have revealed much to me concerning him. Duke Charles hath oftener been the subject of my revelations than any man living except my King.”[1234]
[Footnote 1234: _Ibid._, p. 55.]
In reality, all that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had done was to tell her of the well-known misfortunes of the Prince. Valentine of Milan's son and Isabelle Romee's daughter were separated by a gulf broader and deeper than the ocean which stretched between them. They dwelt at the antipodes of the world of souls, and all the saints of Paradise would have been unable to explain one to the other.
All the same Duke Charles was a good prince and a debonair; he was kind and he was pitiful. More than any other he possessed the gift of pleasing. He charmed by his grace, albeit but ill-looking and of weak const.i.tution.[1235] His temperament was so out of harmony with his position that he may be said to have endured his life rather than to have lived it. His father a.s.sa.s.sinated by night in the Rue Barbette in Paris by order of Duke John; his mother a perennial fount of tears, dying of anger and of grief in a Franciscan nunnery; the two S's, standing for _Soupirs_ (sighs) and _Souci_ (care), the emblems and devices of her mourning, revealing her ingenious mind fancifully elegant even in despair; the Armagnacs, the Burgundians, the Cabochiens, cutting each other's throats around him; these were the sights he had witnessed when little more than a child. Then he had been wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Azincourt.
[Footnote 1235: Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. fr. 966, fol. 1.]
Now, for fourteen years, dragged from castle to castle, from one end to the other of the island of fogs; imprisoned within thick walls, closely guarded, receiving two or three of his countrymen at long intervals, but never permitted to converse with one except before witnesses, he felt old before his time, blighted by misfortune. ”Fruit fallen in its greenness, I was put to ripen on prison straw. I am winter fruit,”[1236] he said of himself. In his captivity, he suffered without hope, knowing that on his death-bed Henry V had recommended his brother not to give him up at any price.[1237]
[Footnote 1236: _Les poesies de Charles d'Orleans_, ed. Guichard, 1842, in 12mo, p. 145.]
[Footnote 1237: A. Champollion-Figeac, _Louis et Charles, ducs d'Orleans, leur influence sur les arts, la litterature et l'esprit de leur siecle_, Paris, 1844, 1 vol. in 8vo, with an atlas, pp. 300-337.]