prodigality, and he delighted in the magnificence of which he was the object, without troubling himself about their cost to himself. Between 1389 and 1390, for about six months, he travelled through Burgundy, the banks of the Rhone, Languedoc, and the small principalities bordering on the Pyrenees. Everywhere his progress was stopped for the purpose of presenting to him petitions or expressing wishes before him. At Nimes and Montpellier, and throughout Languedoc, passionate representations were made to him touching the bad government of his two uncles, the Dukes of Anjou and Berry. "They had plundered and ruined," he was told, "that beautiful and rich province; there were five or six talliages a year; one was no sooner over than another began; they had levied quite three millions of gold from Villeneuve-d'Avignon to Toulouse." Charles listened with feeling, and promised to have justice done, and his father's old councillors, who were in his train, were far from dissuading him. The Duke of Burgundy, seeing him start with them in his train, had testified his spite and disquietude to the Duke of Berry, saying, "Aha! there goes the king on a visit to Languedoc, to hold an inquiry about those who have governed it. For all his council be takes with him only La Riviere, Le Mercier, Montaigu, and Le Begue de Vilaine. What say you to that, my brother?" "The king, our nephew, is young," answered the Duke of Berry: "if he trusts the new councillors he is taking, he will be deceived, and it will end ill, as you will see. As for the present, we must support him. The time will come when we will make those councillors, and the king himself, rue it. Let them do as they please, by God: we will return to our own dominions. We are none the less the two greatest in the kingdom, and so long as we are united, none can do aught against us."

The future is a blank, as well to the anxieties as to the hopes of men. The king's uncles were on the point of getting back the power which they believed to be lost to them. On the 13th of June, 1392, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, was waylaid as he was returning home after a banquet given by the king at the hostel of St. Paul. The assassin was Peter de Craon, cousin of John IV., Duke of Brittany. He believed De Clisson to be dead, and left him bathed in blood at a baker's door in the street called Culture-Sainte-Catherine. The king was just going to bed, when one of his people came and said to him, "Ah! sir, a great misfortune has happened in Paris." "What, and to whom?" said the king. "To your constable, sir, who has just been slain." "Slain!" cried Charles; "and by whom?" "Nobody knows; but it was close by here, in St. Catherine Street." "Lights! quick!" said the king; "I will go and see him;" and he set off, without waiting for his following. When he entered the baker's shop, De Clisson, grievously wounded, was just beginning to recover his senses. "Ah! constable," said the king, "and how do you feel?" "Very poorly, dear sir." "And who brought you to this pass?" "Peter de Craon and his accomplices; traitorously and without warning." "Constable," said the king, "never was anything so punished or dearly paid for as this shall be; take thought for yourself, and have no further care; it is my affair." Orders were immediately given to seek out Peter de Craon, and hurry on his trial. He had taken refuge, first in his own castle of Sable, and afterwards with the Duke of Brittany, who kept him concealed, and replied to the king's envoys that he did not know where he was. The king proclaimed his intention of making war on the Duke of Brittany until Peter de Craon should be discovered, and justice done to the constable. Preparations for war were begun; and the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy received orders to get ready for it, themselves and their vassals. The former, who happened to be in Paris at the time of the attack, did not care to directly oppose the king's project; but he evaded, delayed, and predicted a serious war. According to Froissart, he had been warned, the morning before the attack, by a simple cleric, of Peter de Craon's design; but, "It is too late in the day," he had said; "I do not like to trouble the king to-day; to-morrow, without fail, we will see to it." He had, however, forgotten or neglected to speak to his nephew. Neither he nor his brother, the Duke of Burgundy, there is reason to suppose, were accomplices in the attack upon De Clisson, but they were not at all sorry for it. It was to them an incident in the strife begun between themselves, princes of the blood royal, and those former councillors of Charles V., and now, again, of Charles VI., whom, with the impertinence of great lords, they were wont to call the marinosettes. They left nothing undone to avert the king's anger and to preserve the Duke of Brittany from the war which was threatening him.

Charles VI.'s excitement was very strong, and endured forever. He pressed forward eagerly his preparations for war, though attempts were made to appease him. He was recommended to take care of himself; for he had been ill, and could scarcely mount his horse; and the Duke of Burgundy remonstrated with him several times on the fatigue he was incurring. "I find it better for me," he answered, "to be on horseback, or working at my council, than to keep resting. Whoso wishes to persuade me otherwise is not of my friends, and is displeasing to me." A letter from the Queen of Arragon gave some ground for supposing that Peter de Craon had taken refuge in Spain; and the Duke of Burgundy took advantage of it to dissuade the king from his prompt departure for the war in Brittany. "At the very least," he said, "it was right to send to Arragon to know the truth of the matter, and to thank the queen for her courtesy." "We are quite willing, uncle," answered Charles: "you need not be vexed; but for my own part I hold that this traitor of a Peter de Craon is in no other prison and no other Barcelona than there is in being quite comfortable at the Duke of Brittany's." There was no way of deterring him from his purpose. He had got together his uncles and his troops at Le Mans; and, after passing three weeks there, he gave the word to march for Brittany. The tragic incident which at that time occurred has nowhere been more faithfully or better narrated than in M. de Barante's History of the Dukes of Burgundy. "It was," says he, "the beginning of August, 1392, during the hottest days of the year. The sun was blazing, especially in those sandy districts. The king was on horseback, clad in a short and tight dress called a jacket. His was of black velvet, and very oppressive. On his head he wore a cap of scarlet velvet, ornamented with a chaplet of large pearls, which the queen had given him at his departure. Behind him were two pages on horseback. In order not to incommode the king with dust, he was left to march almost alone. To the left of him were the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, some paces in front, conversing together. The Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Bourbon, Sire de Coney, and some others were also in front, forming another group. Behind were Sires de Navarre, de Bar, d'Albret, d'Artois, and many others in one pretty large troop. They rode along in this order, and had just entered the great forest of Le Mans, when all at once there started from behind a tree by the road-side a tall man, with bare head and feet, clad in a common white smock, who, dashing forward and seizing the king's horse by the bridle, cried, 'Go no farther; thou art betrayed!'