in^igi ftuhg.
 
 FROISSART 
 
 MARY DARMESTETER 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 E. FRANCES POYNTER 
 
 LONDON 
 T. FISHER U N W I N 
 
 PATKKNOSTER SQUARE 
 1895
 
 In rendering the passages quoted from Froissarfs 
 Chronicles into English, the translator has followed, 
 wherever it has been found possible, Lord Berners 
 version of 1523.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. FAOK 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD I 
 
 II. JOURNEY TO ENGLAND . . . . 6 
 
 III. FROISSART AT THE COURT OF LONDON . . . 13 
 
 IV. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRONICLES . . 19 
 V. DEATH OF QUEEN PHILIPPA ..... 24 
 
 VI. RETURN TO VALENCIENNES ..... 29 
 
 VII. FRO1SSART FINISHES THE FIRST BOOK OF THE 
 
 CHRONICLES 34 
 
 VIII. THE PATRONS 38 
 
 IX. WENCESLAS, DUKE OF BRABANT .... 45 
 
 X. THE CHAPLAIN OF THE COUNT OF BLOIS ... 50 
 
 XI. THE JOURNEY TO BEARN ..... 56 
 
 XII. THE COURT AT ORTHEZ 6 1 
 
 XIII. MKLIADOR 69 
 
 XIV. STORIES OF BKARN ... . . . . . 83 
 
 XV. THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. . . .9! 
 
 XVI. FROISSART AT AVIGNON ...... 98
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 1>AOE 
 
 XVII. THE RETURN FROM BEARN . lo1 
 
 XVIII. THE SALE OF BLOIS . . . . Io6 
 
 XIX. THE RETURN TO ENGLAND . . , . I 1 7 
 
 XX. AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND . .123 
 
 XXI. THE THIRD REDACTION OF THE CHRONICLES . 128 
 
 XXII. u LES VRAYES CHRONIQUES " OF MESSIRE JEAN- 
 
 LE-BEL . T 34 
 
 XXIII. ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES . . . .142
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FROISSART IN HIS STUDY . . . frontispiece 
 
 QUEEN ISABELLA ON HER VOYAGE TO ENGLAND facing page 13 
 
 VIEW OF OLD WESTMINSTER . . . 1 6 
 
 THE RECEPTION OF THE BLACK PRINCE AT BOR- 
 DEAUX . . . . . 22 
 
 BATTLE OF CRESSY ....,, 35 
 
 BATTLE OF POICT1ERS ....,, 40 
 
 GASTON PHCEBUS, COUNT DE FOIX . . ,, 6 1 
 
 TOURNAMENT HELD AT ST INGLEVERE, NEAR 
 CALAIS, WHERE THREE FRENCH KNIGHTS 
 DEFEND THE LISTS FOR THIRTY DAYS 
 AGAINST ALL COMERS, FROM ENGLAND AND 
 
 ELSEWHERE . 8l 
 
 THE CASTLE OF FOIX . . . ,,84 
 
 THE SUDOKN DEATH OF COUNT GASTON DE FOIX 94
 
 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 MASQUE OK CHARLES vi. ... facing page 96 
 
 PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON . . ,,98 
 
 PROCLAMATION OF THE RENEWAL OF THE TRUCE 
 BETWEEN THE KINGS OF FRANCE AND 
 ENGLAND, AFTER THE KING OF FRANCE'S 
 RECOVERY . . . . . ,,Iiy 
 
 THE FUNKRAL OF RICHARD II. . . . ., 127 
 
 MEDI/EVAL CHESSMEN . . . . 11*37
 
 FROISSART. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 VERY little is known of the youth of Froissart. He was 
 born at Valenciennes, but considerable disagreement exists, 
 even among scholars, as to the exact date of his birth. 
 
 Froissart, nevertheless, alludes to the subject more than 
 once. "On the thirtieth night of November 1373, I was 
 thirty-five years old, a little more, a little less," he tells us 
 in one of his poems, the Jolt Buisson dejeunesse; from which 
 we might conclude that he was born in 1338. But in the 
 third book of the Chronicles we read : " Know that in the 
 year of grace 1390, I was fifty-seven years of age ;" which 
 is as much as to say that he was born in 1333. A little 
 further on, in the fourth book, he relates to us a long 
 history that he heard " in the year of grace 1361, being at 
 Berkhampstead, beyond London, and as then I was of the 
 age of twenty-four years." This takes us back to the year 
 1337, the date which is, in fact, generally adopted by his 
 biographers. But Froissart goes on to speak in detail of 
 this memorable visit to Berkhampstead. It was at the 
 
 A
 
 2 FROISSART. 
 
 moment of the Christmas festivities ; the King, the Queen, 
 and all the Court were come from London to bid farewell 
 to the Prince of Wales, recently married, and about to start 
 for Bordeaux with his wife. "They were come thither to 
 take leave," Froissart tells us. Now, we know that the 
 Prince and Princess of Wales did not leave England until 
 a little after Christmas, in 1363 ; it is clear, therefore, that 
 Froissart, writing of these matters in his old age, mistakes 
 the date by a year. It must have been in December 1362 
 that he was twenty-four years old, and this slight correction 
 suffices to set the first and last of the three dates given, in 
 agreement. We may decide, then, that it was in the depth 
 of the winter of the year 1338 that Froissart was born at 
 Valenciennes. 
 
 Froissart was a native of Hainault, which at that time 
 formed an independent principality, comprising within 
 itself the Belgian Hainault of to-day and the south-east 
 portion of the modern French department of the Nord. 
 The first French writer of his day, Froissart was, neverthe- 
 less, a true son of his province; throughout his life he 
 retained his native accent and provincial orthography, and 
 his many journeys notwithstanding, he remained always 
 faithful to his little Hainault Hainault the free, the 
 cultured, the " chevalereux." Nor, in truth, could better 
 soil have been found for the growth and nurture of an 
 historian. The Wallon princes were themselves men of 
 letters. In the Chateau of Beaumont were preserved, as 
 a most precious deposit, the Livres of Messire Baudouin 
 d'Avesnes ; at Liege, the bellicose canon, Messire Jean- 
 le-Bel, author and grand seigneur to boot, was in the
 
 CHILDHOOD. 3 
 
 act of revising his Vraie et Notable Histoire ; and, also 
 at Liege, in the same winter that gave birth to Froissart, 
 that stupendous chronicler, Jean d'Outremeuse, first 
 saw the light. 
 
 Nothing is known of the family of Froissart. Certain 
 scholiasts, on the strength of an imperfectly understood 
 ballad, have hazarded the opinion that his father was an 
 heraldic painter ; and when the romance of Meliador is 
 given to the world, the abundant details to be found there 
 on the work of a " painter-craftsman," may seem, perhaps, 
 to give colour to a myth that has its symbolical charm. 
 Le Joli Buisson de Jeunesse, however, would lead us to 
 suppose that it was to some solid family of well-to-do 
 burgesses, money-changers or cloth-merchants, that the de- 
 lightful story-teller belonged ; and this is all that can be said 
 on the subject. In all the immense mass of writing left by 
 Froissart, not a word concerning father or mother, brother or 
 sister, relation or guardian, is to be found. So blank is the 
 record indeed, in this direction, that an ingenious bio- 
 grapher supposes him left an orphan in early childhood, 
 insinuates that he may have been of illegitimate and 
 unrecognised birth, and suggests some churlish guardian 
 as his sole protector; since, immediately on attaining his 
 majority, we find Froissart quitting his native country 
 without a word of regret. All this, however, is mere 
 matter of fancy and hypothesis. Better were it to resign 
 ourselves frankly to knowing nothing at all ; and such 
 resignation is the easier, that, against the surrounding 
 obscurity, the little personality of the child stands out 
 very brightly revealed. Never has the idyll of childhood,
 
 4 FROISSART. 
 
 that idyll which moves and inspires the least sympathetic 
 soul, been touched with a happier grace than by Froissart. 
 He shows us to the life the little fellow, not over studious 
 apparently, with imperfect Latin lessons that often bring 
 him acquainted with the rod, tiring quickly too of chess or 
 dice, or any other rational and sedentary amusement, 
 but not . without his favourite games nevertheless ; he 
 makes us out a list, indeed, of no fewer than fifty-two. 
 How many charming pastimes lost since those days for 
 the children of France ! A good half of these games are 
 no longer known petals, as it were, fallen for ever from 
 that poor rose of gaiety, blooming freshly then in the 
 nation's youth. Who can now tell us what was the game 
 of the Baron Enguerrand, or that other game of Pince 
 Marine, which was played 
 
 " When the moonlight was serene," 
 
 and which was held to be a pastime fit for the children 
 of royalty ? Young Froissart played not less well at games 
 that are still popular ; at prisoner's base, at chasing 
 butterflies, or at the delicate and difficult sport of com- 
 pelling a feather to fly against the wind. At other times, 
 simply bestriding his schoolboy stick, it forthwith became 
 a gallant courser, Grisel by name, all ready to carry him 
 to the wars. In later years, when the child was grown 
 into a man, it was after much the same peaceful fashion 
 that he was destined to see most of the battles of his time. 
 At the age of twelve, Froissart was sent to school to 
 learn Latin. But the child neglected his " Catonnet " 
 and his Catechism. Then, as always, he preferred the
 
 CHILDHOOD. 5 
 
 realities of life to mere abstractions ; and how was the 
 Latin grammar to be studied, when there, close by, on the 
 same benches, were to be seen the most charming little 
 girls, " qui de mon temps etaient jeunettes" as he tells us? 
 He liked to make them little presents of pins 
 
 " Ou d'une pomme, ou d'une poire 
 Ou d'un seul anelet de verre. 
 Et lors devisai a part moi : 
 Quand done viendra le temps pour moi 
 Que par amours pourrai aimer ? " 
 
 He was by no means so good a neighbour to the 
 brothers of his little friends, for he dearly loved to 
 exchange blows with boys of his own age. 
 
 " I was beaten, and I beat others," 
 
 he tells us with a just pride; and then, returning home, he 
 would be beaten again for his shirt in rags and his coat in 
 tatters. All this, however, probably happened but seldom ; 
 for even then, one may suppose, what the good Froissart 
 really liked best, was to contemplate as an observer the 
 disputes and quarrels of others.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOURNEY TO ENGLAND. 
 
 OUR little fellow, so anxious to find favour in the eyes 
 of his pretty school-companions, was soon to fall more 
 seriously in love. " I was not yet weary," he tells us, 
 "of playing those games that amuse children who have 
 not reached their twelfth year, when Love, by his mighty 
 power, drew me with longing to every kind of diversion. 
 Above all, I loved in summer-time to walk in large 
 gardens full of violets and peonies and roses ; nothing 
 pleased me so much as to see these beautiful flowers. 
 And, when the weather changed at the approach of 
 winter, I forgot to be dull, in reading long romances that 
 treated of love." 
 
 One sentiment only, the poet tells us, filled his 
 adolescent heart from his fourteenth to his twenty-fourth 
 year. It is a love-history that he has related at length 
 in one of the most charming poems of the fourteenth 
 century: LEspinette Amoureuse. One must be careful, 
 however, not to take these confidences too seriously. 
 Almost always, in poems of love, the sentiment is so true, 
 and the recorded facts so fictitious, that the most ingenious 
 reader may find himself deceived. Little details, drawn from
 
 JOURNEY TO ENGLAND. 7 
 
 the life, are scattered throughout a purely imaginative 
 story details which, dear to the writer's heart, survive 
 through his pen in the verses of the poem as dried 
 flowers survive between the leaves of a book. In this 
 little romance, the mere facts of the story seem to be 
 arranged to suit the poet's fancy ; but it is with an 
 ingenuous accent, touched with true emotion, that he 
 describes the learned young lady who set his fifteen-year- 
 old heart beating. One day they meet at a party a 
 garden-party of five centuries ago ; she walks with him 
 a little apart, she bends to gather five violets, she gives 
 him three, the other two she keeps herself. Another 
 day she begs the youthful Froissart to lend her a 
 romance ; and while the poor boy says " Yes ! " with 
 flaming eyes, he asks himself where one is to be procured, 
 since in those days romances were a luxury for the rich. 
 At last he finds at home an old copy of the Bailli 
 d' Amour ; she reads it, confides to him her impressions and 
 lends him in exchange the romance Ctiomades. All this is 
 related with a lightness of touch and a sincerity of accent 
 that have a true charm. Then one day the young girl 
 marries, and Froissart is like to die of grief, until, a few 
 weeks later, he turns his mighty despair into a " new ballad." 
 This lover of twenty-three was a clerk, and wore the 
 tonsure, a thing frequently seen in those days, when 
 many a barber-hairdresser found his account in the 
 general desire to be placed under the ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction. In the registers of the Chatelet, we meet on 
 every page the names of lawyers, merchants, simple 
 labourers even, who, as clerks, placed themselves under the
 
 8 FROfSSART. 
 
 protection of the Bishop. In every grade of society .the 
 married clerks formed, as it were, a new class ; it was one 
 of the most striking signs of the relaxation of ecclesiastical 
 discipline, brought about by the misfortunes of the papacy. 
 "The life of religion," says M. Jusserand in his admirable 
 study upon Piers Plowman, " had not yet the precise'limits 
 to which we are now accustomed. Many men of letters, 
 precentors, sacristans, or mere secretaries, received the 
 minor orders, and went no further." And, as for their lay 
 brethren, so for these tonsured heads, two sources of 
 honour were open ; arms and love. Petrarch had no 
 scruple in proclaiming his passion for a married woman. 
 The brave Jean-le-Bel, canon of Liege though he was, 
 loved, sword in hand, to follow the god of battles ; and the 
 twin sons, born to him in his old age, brought no blush to 
 the sunburnt brow of the canon-knight. Froissart, a 
 simple clerk, found nothing in his order that should 
 compel him to submit to austere rules ; nor, indeed, is there 
 any question here of monkish discipline or of ascetic, 
 black-robed seminarist. Rather, it is as a youthful and 
 elegant University man that we have to imagine this hand- 
 some lover of twenty-three, as, with a dozen unpublished 
 poems at the bottom of his trunk, he starts on his way 
 to seek his fortune at the English Court. 
 
 We know so little of the youth of Froissart, that it is 
 impossible to say how this young bourgeois found the 
 leisure and the means necessary for visiting foreign coun- 
 tries. Perhaps some Meccenas (and there were many such 
 in these little lettered courts of Hainault), may have made 
 himself responsible for the young poet's expenses. Perhaps
 
 JOURNEY TO ENGLAND. 9 
 
 that old canon of Liege, Jean-le-Bel, whose chronicles end 
 the same year in which those of Froissart were begun, may 
 have designated the young Valenciennois as capable of 
 continuing his work. At seventy years of age, very rich, 
 and very liberal, Jean-le-Bel may have wished to assure 
 himself of a successor. All this, however, is pure conjec- 
 ture ; all that can be affirmed with certainty is, that in 1361, 
 the year in which Jean-le-Bel ceased to write, the young 
 Jean Froissart left Valenciennes for London, whither he 
 went to present to Queen Philippa of Hainault a manu- 
 script of his own on the battle of Poitiers. 
 
 That manuscript was, without doubt, the germ of the 
 Chronicles. It is lost for us. Perhaps it still lies hidden 
 in some dusty corner of the Record Office of London, or 
 among the imperfectly-catalogued archives of some old 
 English country-house. We shall meet in the course of 
 these pages with so many extraordinary discoveries, made 
 during the last few years, that there is nothing extravagant 
 in the hope that the first book of Froissart may one day 
 be recovered. For the moment, we know only what he 
 himself tells us about it. " Always to my power I have 
 justly enquired for the truth of the deeds of wars and ad- 
 ventures that have fallen, and especially sith the great battle 
 of Poitiers, whereas the noble King John of France was taken 
 prisoner; as before that time I was but of a young age 
 or understanding. Howbeit, I took on me, as soon as I 
 came from school, to rhyme and to recite (a rimer et a 
 dittier) the above wars, and bare the same compiled into 
 England, as I had written it." This book, " compiled " in 
 part, as he tells us elsewhere, from the Vraies Chroniques
 
 io FROISSART. 
 
 of Messire Jean-le-Bel, was probably a species of chante- 
 fable, half in verse and half in prose at once " rim6 " and 
 " dittie " as the poet explains. Some years later, we find 
 Froissart composing for the Duke of Brabant another 
 narrative of this description, which we still possess under 
 the title of La Prison Amoureuse. 
 
 Queen Philippa, for whom the young poet destined this 
 chronicle of her son's and her husband's glory, was, like 
 himself, a native of Valenciennes ; she liked to protect 
 and to encourage her compatriots, and had made the 
 court of England an asylum for Wallon men of letters. 
 Froissart, no doubt, had often heard of her kindnesses, 
 for she was much talked of in the good and "frisk" 
 town of Valenciennes ; as, in our time, the younger 
 days of the Princess of Wales or the Empress of Russia 
 are doubtless still spoken of in Copenhagen. Many an 
 old man, many a gossiping matron, would still remember 
 how the youthful Edward of England had come with 
 his weeping mother, a fugitive like himself, to implore 
 aid and succour from the Count of Hainault. When 
 he went away, little Madame Philippa wept over his 
 departure with all the childish despair of her twelve 
 years. " She was more conversant with him than any 
 of her sisters, and the young Edward set more his love 
 and company on Philippa than on the others." The 
 little girl of twelve was not far from fifty in 1361 ; but 
 the gracious little idyll was not the less remembered 
 for that. It was Froissart himself who, many years later, 
 was to narrate the charming scene when the two cousins 
 bade each other farewell. . . . When the Queen of
 
 JO URNE Y TO ENGLAND. 1 1 
 
 England took leave on her departure for her own 
 kingdom, she embraced in turn all the daughters of 
 the Count of Hainault, and the Prince of Wales followed 
 her example. When it came to the turn of Philippa, 
 the little girl burst into tears. " They asked her why 
 she wept. ' Because,' she said, ' my fair cousin of England 
 is about to leave me, and I had grown so used to him.' 
 Then all the knights who were there present began to 
 laugh." Perhaps these great personages already foresaw 
 what the little Philippa had no means of guessing that 
 brilliant cortege which, in the following year, was to escort 
 to her kingdom beyond the seas the child-wife of young 
 Edward III. of England. The Hainuyers were proud 
 of this marriage, proud above all of the virtue and beauty 
 of their daughter. " Tall and upright was she, wise, gay, 
 humble, pious, liberal, and courteous, decked and adorned 
 in her time with all noble virtues, beloved of God and 
 of mankind. . . . For since the time of Queen Guinevere, 
 wife of King Arthur and Queen of England, no such good 
 Queen had been known. . . . And so long as she lived, 
 the kingdom of England had favour, prosperity, honour, 
 and every sort of good fortune, neither did famine nor 
 dearth remain in the land during her reign, and so you 
 will find it recorded in history." In these terms it was, 
 that Froissart in his extreme old age was to speak of her. 
 
 In recalling to mind all that he had heard of this 
 Queen, whom he himself was at last about to see, 
 young Froissart may also perhaps have remembered 
 that marvellous page of the Vraies Chroniques where 
 Messire Jean-le-Bel relates the story of the clemency
 
 12 . FItOISSART. 
 
 of Philippa, and her intercession in favour of the burgesses 
 of Calais. Froissart admired this episode so greatly 
 that he inserted it, without changing a line, in his 
 Chronicles, where twenty generations in succession, in 
 perfect good faith, have esteemed it the pearl of his 
 whole work.
 
 QUEEN ISABELLA ON HER JOURNEY TO ENGLAND.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FROISSART AT THE COURT OF LONDON. 
 
 IT was at the most active moment of that large expansion 
 of the national life which took place in England during the 
 fourteenth century, that Froissart found himself in London. 
 Twenty years earlier, England was still a provincial 
 France a somewhat clumsy and ridiculous France, 
 where strong beer was drunk instead of sparkling and 
 non-intoxicating wine, where imperfect grammar was 
 heard, and a foreign accent, and the people had fair 
 hair that was not at all in the taste of Paris. The 
 French language was read and was taught ; it was the 
 language of the law courts ; it was commonly spoken 
 even, much as it was in Russia some sixty years ago. 
 A chronicler of the reign of Edward III. laments this 
 effacement of the native tongue. " Our children," he 
 says, "when they go to school, are compelled to leave 
 the use of their own language, a thing which is known 
 in no other country. The children of the nobility speak 
 French from the cradle, and call their playthings by 
 foreign names. The country squireens, who wish also 
 to be looked on as noble, learn the French language 
 with great difficulty, in order to be held in more esteem."
 
 i 4 FROISSART. 
 
 Romances were written in French, serious books in 
 Latin ; English was merely a patois without elegance. 
 In the course of the fourteenth century, however, a great 
 change had shown itself; the national language had 
 penetrated to the schools, to the courts of justice, to 
 parliament: dating from the year 1362, the assizes were 
 held in English, " because the French tongue was ill under- 
 stood by the people." Wycliffe and Langland addressed 
 the common 'folk in their mother tongue ; Geoffrey Chaucer, 
 a page in the suite of Edward III., was beginning to 
 construct a splendid and powerful language out of the 
 formless dialect of the poor. If children were still in- 
 structed in French, it was chiefly with a view to military 
 operations, as the French in our day are instructed in 
 German; for already in 1337 the Parliament of West- 
 minster had ordained that the French language should 
 be taught to every child, gentle or simple, "par quoy ils 
 en fuissent plus ables en leurs gherres." 
 
 Of all this renascence Froissart, one may be sure, 
 observed little or nothing. He was in no sense a man of 
 letters ; he hardly mentions Geoffrey Chaucer, his junior by 
 some months, in attendance like himself at the Court, and 
 whom he must have met at the house of Sir Richard Stury 
 more than once ; and then it is as diplomatist, and not as 
 poet, that Froissart speaks of him. Poetry and the niceties 
 of language are mere trifles to a young clerk enamoured 
 of chivalry. For him, there is but one true glory the 
 glory that flowers on the field of battle ; his very humble 
 mission is to teach warriors to become more worthy ("a 
 mieux valoir") by instructing them in the traditions of
 
 FROISSART AT THE COURT OF LONDON. 15 
 
 chivalry and in its examples. What really excited his 
 interest in London were those old and valiant captains, 
 who, during the last thirty years, had carried on the wars 
 in France ; what chiefly struck him at the Court of Edward 
 III. was the large magnificence, the rich and "etoffee" 
 furnishing of the palaces, overflowing with the spoils 
 of sacked towns and captured camps. London was full of 
 princes, and nobles, and kings. The King and Queen held 
 their court at Westminster, at Windsor, or at Eltham ; in 
 London or at Berkhampstead, the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales "kept high and noble state." The most splendid 
 figures of chivalry challenged admiration and comparison 
 the old lion, Edward III., with his noble Queen ; the Black 
 Prince, " the best knight in the entire world," and at his side 
 the Fair Maid of Kent, " the fairest lady in all the kingdom 
 of England," Froissart tells us, "and the most amorous." 
 The Prince had lately married her for love, without his 
 father's knowledge, fascinated by the fine audacious air of 
 this young widow, who was already the mother of several 
 children. Later on, the Knight of la Tour Landry was 
 to describe the glittering and eccentric taste, the somewhat 
 flaunting toilettes of this beautiful and worldly woman 
 " toilettes copied," he says, " from the dresses of the 
 bonnes amies of the brigands of Languedoc." In the 
 palace of the Prince, as in the King's palace, there was 
 a continual coming and going of heroes, and the con- 
 querors of Crcy and of Poitiers asked nothing better 
 than to tell the history of their exploits over again. 
 
 With all this varied world, Froissart came into imme- 
 diate contact ; for Queen Philippa, always so friendly
 
 1 6 FROISSAXT. 
 
 towards the Hainuyers, had not contented herself with 
 receiving his book " liement et doucement," "sweetly and 
 courteously," as he tells us ; she had given the young poet 
 the post of secretary, encouraging him to pursue his 
 historical work. "Wherever I went," he says, "I made 
 enquiry of the ancient knights and squires, who had 
 taken part in feats of arms, and could speak of them 
 rightly ; and also of ancient heralds, to verify and justify 
 all these matters .... and for love of the noble lady to 
 whom I belonged, lords, kings, dukes, counts, ladies, and 
 knights of whatever nation they might be, loved me, 
 listened, and saw with a good will, and profited me 
 greatly." 
 
 This, assuredly, was the most brilliant, the most 
 striking moment of Froissart's life, the hour among all 
 other hours, that could never be forgotten. " In a whole 
 day could not be recounted all the noble dinners, suppers, 
 feasts, and rejoicings, the gifts, the presents, the jewels 
 that were made, given, and piesented!" At these feasts 
 and entertainments they were not only the splendours 
 of England that were revealed to the Hainuyer; he found 
 there also the unhappy chivalry of France. At least sixty 
 great personages were then present, as prisoners or 
 hostages, in the city of London. Four dukes of the 
 blood-royal surrounded the prisoner-king, not to mention 
 half-a-dozen counts, more than a score of barons, a 
 whole crowd of mere squires and knights, and thirty-six 
 burgesses of condition, sent as hostages by the great 
 towns of the north and centre of France. All this 
 motley throng of people was " massed and housed in the
 
 FROISSART AT THE COURT OF LONDON, 17 
 
 city of London " ; each one brought his own household with 
 him, and held great state in his exile. Philip of Orleans 
 had sixteen servants for himself alone, for the prison-house 
 of these great lords was wide. When they quitted their 
 splendid habitations, it was to go to Court, where Edward 
 III. was ever ready to give them entertainment, "asking 
 news of them, and letting them come and go, ride and take 
 their pastime, hawk and hunt throughout the kingdom of 
 England." Froissart marvels at the amenity of English 
 manners. These gentlemen beyond the sea, he finds, 
 have an absolute reliance on the word of honour, often 
 allowing their prisoners to depart on the faith of a simple 
 promise to bring back their ransom in three months, in a 
 year, or at any other fixed period. " Such has never been 
 the habit or the courtesy of the Germans," Froissart tells 
 us. " I do not know what they will do from now hence- 
 forward, but until now they have shown neither mercy 
 nor pity to Christian men-at-arms, be they nobles or 
 gentlemen. But, when they take them, they put them 
 
 in irons or in prison and all for the sake of a 
 
 better ransom." Practices so base as these were unknown 
 in France as in England, where, indeed, any French knight 
 would feel himself more in sympathy with an English brother 
 in chivalry than with a man of the people of his own 
 nationality. Filled then, though it was, with foreign 
 prisoners at the time of Froissart's visit, the city of London 
 presented no dreary aspect of exile and misery, but had 
 the appearance rather of some considerable town of to-day, 
 on the occasion of a great international congress. 
 
 For Froissart himself, the London of 1362 was a place of 
 
 B
 
 1 8 FROISSART. 
 
 absolute delight ; it made the glory of his young years, as 
 the memory of it was to haunt his old age with long- 
 ing. That splendid and honourable Court, that King, the 
 dread of three kingdoms, that noble Queen in whose service 
 he composed his "beaux ditties et trait6s amoureux," 
 and those knights who knew how to talk " rightly " of the 
 wars, all inspired him with a boundless admiration, an 
 enthusiasm proper to his twenty years. The first redaction 
 of the first book of the Chronicles reflects this overflow- 
 ing Anglo-mania; never has Englishman so sounded the 
 praise of English arms. And yet, hard by there, in the 
 Savoy palace, was lodged a young knight, one of the sons of 
 the Count of Blois,destined in the future to modify profoundly 
 the opinions of the chronicler. For the moment, however, 
 England is in the ascendant. Who would then have 
 believed that the brilliancy of this all-powerful Court would 
 ever be tarnished ? Who could have foretold that that 
 noble Queen, that formidable King, that chivalric Prince, 
 would, before many years were passed, have vanished like 
 smoke, leaving alone and in poverty the sad historiographer 
 of the years of their glory ?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRONICLES. 
 
 FOR nearly five years Froissart continued as " ditteur " 
 in the service of Queen Philippa of England ; but these 
 years were not spent tranquilly in his turret at West- 
 minster. The Queen encouraged the young clerk in his 
 project of writing out at length the history of the wars of 
 France and England, so that, to the end of time, the 
 courage and the courtesy of the heroes of so many knightly 
 adventures might be held in memory. For the history of 
 the first years of the war he had no choice but to draw upon 
 and select from the Chroniques of Messire Jean-le-Bel ; 
 not however, without completing, verifying, and arranging 
 them. There were still living in Great Britain many of the 
 old kriights who had witnessed the accession of Edward III., 
 the first campaigns against the Scotch, and the declaration 
 of war with France. Froissart was untiring in searching 
 them out, in interrogating them, and in taking down in 
 writing the histories he gathered from their lips. He 
 travelled from town to town, from castle to castle, " at the 
 charges of the Queen." The good Madame Philippa sent 
 him as far even as Scotland, with sealed letters, testifying 
 that the young man was one of her secretaries and of her
 
 20 FROISSART. 
 
 household ; so that everywhere Froissart found himself 
 received "kindly and courteously" (tout doucement etlievienf}. 
 The Scottish King, David Bruce, carried him in his 
 company throughout the provinces of his kingdom, an 
 excursion that lasted nearly three months. Nothing that 
 was picturesque on this journey, nothing that was striking, 
 either of scene or of character, escaped the young Wallon ; 
 and everything seen and everything noted, together with 
 the precious historical gleanings carefully gathered up, 
 found their place on the tablets that he loved to fill 
 every evening after supper in his room at castle or inn. 
 All these details sparkle with the just and delicate observa- 
 tion which the chronicler was to preserve to the end of his 
 life, always fresh, as with the dewdrops of an eternal youth. 
 In after years he loved to recall the time when 
 
 " Froissars d'Escosse revenoit 
 Sur un cheval qui gris estoit, 
 Un blanc levrier menant en laisse." 
 
 He travelled slowly, stopping wherever the things of the 
 present or the relics of the past struck his imagination, 
 always on the alert ; and it was in this way that he paused 
 for some time before the Castle of Berkeley, that gloomy 
 fortress where Edward II. had found his prison and his 
 death. Froissart made the acquaintance of the young 
 Lord Despencer, grandson of the unfortunate favourite of 
 the late King ; whilst from a " very ancient knight " he 
 learnt at Berkeley itself all that tragic history with which the 
 Chronicles open. He might have read it already in the pages 
 of Messire Jean-le-Bel ; but here, upon the spot, among the
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRONICLES. 21 
 
 few survivors 01' the drama, it was after a very different 
 fashion, with a thrill as it were of actual experience, that he 
 could place his finger on the very heart of history. The 
 strong resentment and tenacious memory of the disinherited 
 lord allowed nothing to be forgotten ; more than forty times, 
 as the Queen's young clerk was riding with him from town 
 to town and castle to castle, Despencer, in the bitterness of 
 his heart, called him to his side. 
 
 " Froissart, do you see yonder great town with the tall 
 tower ? " 
 
 " Monseigneur, yes. Why do you speak of it?" 
 
 " I speak of it because it ought to be mine ! But 
 there was a wicked queen in this country who took 
 everything from us." 
 
 And what a picture Froissart draws of this "wicked 
 queen," eternally imprisoned in her castle for a crime 
 that a son could neither punish nor forgive ; with what 
 clearness he sets before us this " very fair lady, sweet- 
 tongued and feminine," who played so cruel and so 
 audacious a part in the sombre prologue of the Hundred 
 Years' War. 
 
 In thus collecting precious documents and setting down 
 a mass of delicate observations to serve in the splendid 
 rifacimento of the Vraies Chroniques of Messire Jean-le- 
 Bel, Froissart was to spend several years. He may 
 probably have been already occupied in the revision 
 of the early chapters, when, in the middle of the year 
 1366, he was called upon to quit the past for the present 
 history already accomplished for history in the course of 
 accomplishment. War broke out in Castille, where the
 
 22 FROISSART. 
 
 French were supporting Henry of Transtamare, whilst 
 Peter the Cruel applied for help to the Black Prince; in 
 exchange for certain moneys and various castles in Spain. 
 The expedition was decided on with the sanction of 
 Edward III. Was it Queen Philippa who sent her 
 clerc et intime to accompany her son and chronicle his 
 exploits ; or was Froissart, when he left England in the 
 spring of 1366, still uncertain as to the precise aim of 
 his journey ? Be that as it may, he in any case travelled 
 under the protection of his benefactress, for, on the 
 6th March, the date of his journey to Brussels, the 
 treasurer of Duke Wenceslas of Brabant notes down in 
 his accounts the gift of certain gold pieces made by 
 his master, uni Fritsardo^ qui est cum Regina Anglice. 
 Towards the new year it is at Bordeaux that we find 
 our chronicler describing to us the English Court of 
 the Black Prince, its splendour and his pride ; a splendour 
 maintained by the ransoms of Poitiers ; a tyrannical 
 pride, humiliating to the gentlemen of Gascony, and 
 possibly the primary cause of the reversion of Aquitaine 
 to France. 
 
 The 6th of January 1367, towards ten o'clock in the 
 morning, Froissart was seated at table in the palace of 
 the Prince of Wales when the Marechal d' Aquitaine 
 entered abruptly, and said : 
 
 " Froissart, write and put in memory that as now my 
 
 lady princess is brought abed with a fair son on this 
 
 twelfth day, that is the day of the three kings. And 
 
 he is son of a king ; for his father is King of Galicia, 
 
 he which don Pedro hath given him, and he goes
 
 THE KECEl'TION OF THE HI.ACK I'KIXCE AT HOKDEAI/X.
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRONICLES. 23 
 
 to conquer the said realm .... and thus the child also 
 shall be king." 
 
 The good marshal said nothing of the crown of England, 
 for three vigorous lives stood between the new-born child 
 and that inheritance. Nevertheless, before long, it was 
 he who was to wear that heavy and fatal crown ; and 
 the young historiographer who recorded in writing the 
 birth of the child was to weep over the terrible end of 
 the last of the Plantagenets, Richard II.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DEATH OF QUEEN PHILIPPA. 
 
 TOWARDS the middle of February 1367, the Prince of 
 Wales left Aquitaine at the head of his army. He 
 took Froissart with him as one of the members of his 
 suite ; but they had advanced no further than the town of 
 Dax when the Prince changed his mind, and, for some 
 reason that Froissart does not reveal to us, sent the 
 poet back to England with a message to the Queen. 
 Had he that mistrust of war correspondents so commonly 
 felt by military men ? Or was Froissart charged with 
 a confidential mission not less important than that which 
 he found himself obliged to quit so abruptly? If for the 
 moment the change was a matter of disappointment to 
 the ditteur on the eve of his first campaign, he doubt- 
 less found consolation in the opportunity it gave him 
 to see his benefactress once more. It was to be for the 
 last time. 
 
 Froissart made only a brief stay in London. A marriage 
 had been arranged between the Duke of Clarence, son 
 of the King of England, and Yolande Visconti, daughter 
 of the thrice-rich tyrant of Milan. In the spring of the 
 year 1368, the royal bridegroom left England, taking with
 
 DEATH OF QUEEN PHI LI PP A. 25 
 
 him as his suite four hundred and fifty-seven persons, 
 and nearly thirteen hundred horses. In this train was 
 Froissart, with Edward, Lord Despenccr. On all that 
 concerns this sumptuous progress the chronicler is, un- 
 fortunately, strangely silent. He who so greatly loves to 
 expatiate on the fetes of princes, tells us nothing of Paris, 
 where such magnificent entertainments were given to the 
 son of Edward III., nor of Milan, nor of the bride, nor 
 of the little French Princess Isabelle, with her young life 
 so early stranded in that splendid den of brigands. All 
 this journey, in truth, was, as it were, tainted for him with 
 mournful memories. Scarcely three months after these 
 brilliant wedding festivities, the bridegroom died at Asti 
 near Milan, "strangely enough," Froissart tells us. The 
 history of the Visconti was too well known for the word 
 poison not to be pronounced ; and the impetuous 
 Despencer, in revenge for the death of his friend, made 
 war on the Visconti, " and harried them and overthrew 
 them to their undoing" (les haria et les rua jus), until 
 Monseigneur of Savoy made peace between them. 
 
 Froissart, abandoning this field of battle, passed by 
 Bologna and Ferrara, and continued his journey as far as 
 Rome. Of all this he tells us nothing, except that he 
 travelled with a certain ease, and in the style of a man of 
 distinction 
 
 " En arroi de suffisant homme," 
 
 mounted on a mare, and with a pack-horse for the baggage. 
 His imagination, fresh, quick and lively, but never 
 profound, received from the spectacle of forsaken Rome
 
 26 FROISSART. 
 
 no such poetic impression of fatality as that which 
 Petrarch has quickened with the breath of life for 
 all succeeding generations. Those Christian temples, 
 abandoned by the Popes, and falling in ruins around 
 the dismantled altars of the antique gods ; those immense 
 relics of a superhuman race, baths and theatres con- 
 structed for pagan delights, and useless henceforward 
 in a narrow and shrunken world ; those kings from 
 beyond the sea, wandering like phantoms among the 
 ruins Peter of Cyprus, John Palceologus what indeed 
 could all these have to say to the sprightly poet of 
 gentle knights and " frisk " ladies, to the chronicler of 
 the fetes and tournaments of Eltham or of Valenciennes ? 
 
 It was there, in that alien and sinister land, that land 
 which had so " strangely " carried off his young master, 
 that the " clerk and intimate friend " of Queen Philippa 
 was to receive the greatest blow of his life. " It was," 
 he tells us, " a heavy case and a common, howbelt it 
 was right piteous for the king, his children, and all his 
 realm ; for the good Queen of England, that so many 
 good deeds had done in her time, and so many knights 
 succoured, and ladies and damosels comforted, and had so 
 largely departed of her goods to her people, and naturally 
 loved always the nation of Hainault, the country whereas 
 she was born, she fell sick in the Castle of Windsor. . . . 
 and anon she yielded up the spirit, the which I believe 
 surely the holy angels received with great joy up to 
 heaven, for in all her life she did neither in thought 
 nor deed thing whereby to lose her soul." 
 
 Queen Philippa died on the i$th August 1369. Many
 
 DEATH OF QUEEN PHILIPPA. 27 
 
 times does Froissart recur to the greatness of his loss. 
 " She made me and created me," 
 
 " Elle me fit et crea," 
 he tells us. 
 
 " J'en suis bien tenu de prier 
 Et de ses largesses eerier," 
 
 And again : 
 
 " She was the most gracious queen, the most liberal 
 and the most courteous that reigned in all her time." 
 " Dead is that kind lady, and buried. . . . Alas ! what 
 news for all her friends ! " 
 
 " Morte est-elle et ensevelie 
 
 La bonne dame 
 Qui, en tout honneur, sans blame 
 
 Usa sa vie. . . . 
 Las ! quelle nouvelle 
 Pour tous ses amis ! " 
 
 To Froissart himself, it meant ruin ; in losing the 
 Queen of England, he lost everything. After five 
 years of the royal life of courts, himself the protdge" of 
 princes, and with a name already almost famous, he 
 suddenly found himself cast down, without bread, or 
 the means of gaining bread. Froissart did not yet s'gn 
 himself "priest"; he was only "a certain Froissart, 
 ditteur" and the " dit " was merely a rough draft, 
 formless and unfinished. How was he now to complete 
 it? He had no longer any protector. Clarence was 
 dead at Asti, Philip at Windsor ; the Prince of Wales 
 was preoccupied with his Spanish affairs, more pre- 
 occupied still with his failing health, undermined
 
 28 FROISSART. 
 
 already by sword strokes, and sunstrokes, and the strokes 
 of love. At the Court of England all was in strong 
 reaction against Queen Philippa and her little court 
 of Hainuyers ; Edward III. was falling into the ignoble 
 and mercenary hands of Alice Ferrers ; Edward Despencer 
 was dead. Sadly Froissart began to journey back to 
 his own country, without too well knowing what he should 
 do when he arrived there. And yet, on her native soil 
 of Hainault, the spirit of Queen Philippa was still 
 powerful to aid ; dead and buried, she would yet know 
 how to protect to the end the young writer whom she 
 had " created." By her brother-in-law, Robert of Namur ; 
 by her sister-in-law, Jeanne of Brabant; by her cousin, 
 Guy de Blois, and her nephew, the Duke Aubert, she 
 would be able to send him in due season help and 
 succour and support.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE RETURN TO VALENCIENNES. 
 
 THERE was, however, a difficult time to be lived through 
 first. We hardly know what became of our chronicler in 
 the early months after his return to Hainault. M. Paulin 
 Paris tells us, without a shadow of hesitation, that Froissart 
 became a fashioner of breeches (hauts-de-chausses) ; the 
 Baron Kervyn, less unmerciful, represents him as making 
 no mean living in his business as stockbroker. Both 
 support their theory by the fact that Froissart caused his 
 name to be inscribed in the corporation of the couletiers, 
 one of the four great guilds of Valenciennes. Like the 
 Republics of Italy, the great towns of the north found 
 matter for pride in their commerce ; and, as M. Paulin 
 Paris reminds us, the name of Dante is inscribed in the 
 register of the Apothecaries of Florence. The fact, how- 
 ever, ought perhaps to have set him on guard against 
 his own conclusions, since it would certainly be an error to 
 suppose the great Florentine to have been an apothecary 
 as scholars of the future would undoubtedly err in 
 supposing Lord Salisbury to be a fishmonger, or the 
 Prince of Wales a tailor, because they happen to belong 
 severally to the ancient and powerful guilds of the
 
 30 FROISSART. 
 
 Merchant-Tailors and the Fishmongers of London. One 
 might then believe that it was after this altogether 
 honorary fashion that Froissart belonged to the corporation 
 of the couletiers, were it not for a passage in his Jolt 
 Buisson de Jeunesse a passage which, however con- 
 clusive against any hypothesis of works of manual labour 
 executed by our author, seems to establish clearly that 
 Froissart, although his delicate clerk's fingers never handled 
 a tailor's shears, was, nevertheless, at one time engaged in 
 commerce. " I took up trading " ( Je me suis mis dans la 
 marchandise) he tells us in so many words. But he says 
 nothing about hauts-de-chausses. 
 
 " What I repent of," he adds, " is that I then took up to 
 my cost a thing of which I was ashamed. It was a great 
 fall, for science is worth more than money. I know," 
 Froissart continues, " that this is not the opinion of most 
 people, who do not understand that favours received are 
 ennobling. There are those even, who count to me for 
 shame precisely that which has made me what I am, and 
 what I am worth. Ahi ! ahi ! how could I do this thing ? 
 And yet I thought to do well in changing my business^ 
 and against my will I set myself to trading, for which I am 
 as much cut out as to take part in a battle. . . . Alas ! my 
 science has quite lost her head in this world of bailiffs, of 
 receivers, of rich and powerful men of business, who have 
 built great houses for themselves, where they sleep and 
 take their repose, and amass immense fortunes for their 
 children and their heirs. Hardly do the nobles venture to 
 ask of them that of which they are in want, for these 
 traders prosper in their affairs. Never is merchant or
 
 THE RETURN TO VALENCIENNES. 31 
 
 couletier sent away with a denial, and the third part of the 
 fortune of the nobles passes into their hands. Very little 
 remains then for nobles to make gifts to poets." 
 
 It is probable that this poem, written in 1373, when 
 Froissart was already cure of Lestinnes, and provided with 
 a small income that set him at his ease, refers to the days 
 of trial that followed his return to Valenciennes in 1369. 
 One seems to see that he felt not a little crestfallen in 
 returning to his country, after so long an absence, without 
 either fortune or protector. No doubt his former friends 
 perhaps his relations merchants or couletiers, well-to-do 
 burgesses of Valenciennes, and living with a certain 
 splendour in their great houses, treated the poor poet 
 a little too condescendingly. They found matter for 
 jesting possibly in his histories of kings and queens, as 
 contrasted with his empty pockets ; it would not occur to 
 them that " favours ennoble." The sort of position filled 
 so contentedly by the former clerk and " familier " of Queen 
 Philippa would be displeasing to their proud Flemish 
 independence. The historiographer of the Palace of West- 
 minster would be for them simply a dismissed servant, an 
 actor without an engagement, " a certain Froissart, ditteur, 
 who belongs to the Queen of England." 
 
 " Ain^ois me comptoient pour honte 
 Ce qui m'a fait et dont je vail." 
 
 Doubtless they thought they were doing a good work 
 in making a cloth-merchant out of an impecunious poet ; 
 and the poet himself, impressionable like all poets, 
 brought again under the influence of his native environ-
 
 32 FROISSART. 
 
 ment, utterly discouraged by the loss of his royal mistress 
 and the sudden downfall of his hopes, very sensible, too, 
 to the prestige given by wealth, probably made no 
 objection. Then, as gradually he began to awaken to 
 life once more, the profound want of harmony between 
 his temperament and the situation in which he found 
 himself, must have made itself felt. Certainly, he can 
 have been but an indifferenf cloth-merchant, with his 
 head in the clouds, his eyes full of dreams, and tales of 
 chivalry for ever on his lips. As poverty, too, ceased 
 to press him so closely, his admiration for the rather 
 vulgar luxury of a citizen interior in Valenciennes 
 must by degrees have lessened. One can imagine how 
 his friends must have wearied him, how exasperating 
 he must have found their ideas ; he, in whom everything 
 aspired towards a vanished world. The world of 
 chivalry, the poetic, the noble, the royal world of his 
 youth, had it disappeared for ever? Was he to grow 
 old at Valenciennes ; never be anything more than a pros- 
 perous draper, with " the gift of Nature " for ever lost 
 to him ? Then Froissart's thoughts turned to his patrons 
 of former times ; to the royal House of England, to 
 the Sire de Coucy, Gautier de Manny, the King of 
 Scotland, " the great Lord Espensier," the good Louis 
 of Bourbon, the Dauphin of Auvergne, the three sons 
 of Blois, the Duke Aubert, the Count of Savoy, the 
 King of Cyprus, the Duke Wenceslas of Brabant. A 
 crowd of princes, knights, and nobles take his memory 
 by storm, as it were, and fill his verses with the heroic 
 clash of their names. They had loved and protected
 
 THE RETURN TO VALENCIENNES. 33 
 
 the young writer of former days ; what would they say 
 to this cloth-merchant in the throes of poetry? Suddenly 
 a complete change takes place in the mind of the 
 poet ; with his whole soul he returns to those beloved 
 dreams of other years. The Ideal, so thoughtlessly 
 renounced, appears to him again in all its august 
 beauty ; and he feels shame, not at being a penniless 
 rhymer, living at the expense of his rich relations, but 
 of being a cloth-merchant, inscribed in the great book 
 of the couletiers. For a handful of silver he has sold 
 his dream ; in dread of his little world he has abjured 
 his ideal. Doubtless for him also, at that moment, the 
 cock of repentance must have crowed 
 
 "... Ahi, ahi. 
 
 Et comment le poois-jou faire ? . . . 
 J'ai repris a mon depens 
 Ce de quoi je me hontioie. 
 Dont grandement m'abestioie ; 
 Moult me repens," 
 
 and the painful tears of remorse almost the tears of 
 a St Peter may have dimmed for an instant with their 
 cruel moisture the quick and brilliant eyes of the 
 poet.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FROISSART FINISHES THE FIRST BOOK OF THE 
 CHRONICLES. 
 
 WITH Wenceslas of Brabant, " Prince Consort " of the 
 Duchess of Brabant, Froissart was already acquainted ; 
 for it was Wenceslas who had come to his aid when, 
 as " homme souffisant" and protege of the Queen of 
 England, he had gone to the Court of Aquitaine. In 
 1370 we find the poet at Brussels, forming part of the 
 household of the Duke; and, in the month of June, the 
 Duchess paid, it is recorded, the sum of sixteen francs 
 " uni Frissardo, de uno novo libro gallico" One would 
 like to think that this " new French book " was the first 
 book of the Chronicles of which, about this time, 
 Froissart was finishing the first redaction ; but it was the 
 poet in Froissart that the charming Prince Wenceslas 
 and his good Duchess more especially loved. They 
 could never have enough of pastorals, of ballads, of 
 rhymed romances ; and the Duke liked to collaborate 
 in these fancies of an hour. It was not under the 
 auspices of gay patrons such as these that Froissart was 
 to finish the serious business of his history. 
 
 It was perhaps at Brussels, in 1370, that Froissart first 
 met Robert of Namur. This nephew of Queen Philippa,
 
 FINISHES FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 35 
 
 this champion of the English, was a brave and chivalrous 
 gentleman, a crusader in Prussia, a crusader in Palestine, 
 and as brilliant in a tournament as he was formidable in 
 front of a besieged castle. A man like this was capable 
 of understanding the great value of those roughly-drafted 
 chapters, those brilliantly sketched notes which Froissart 
 kept in his portfolio. It was he, without doubt, who 
 furnished the chronicler with documents for his history 
 of the siege of Calais in 1346, as well as for the 
 expedition of Tournehem in 1 369 ; for these exploits 
 could not be spoken of without speaking also of Messire 
 Robert of Namur. In talking over sieges and battles 
 with this valiant captain of Edward III., the glorious past 
 must have lived again for Froissart. All those enthusiasms 
 to which Messire Robert was moved by his devotion to 
 chivalry and his strong predilection for England, were 
 shared by the chronicler ; Froissart had once more found 
 a patron ; and in the prologue to the oldest manuscripts 
 that are preserved to us of the first book of the Chronicles 
 we read : " This book has been enterprised at the 
 instance and request of a dear lord and master of mine, 
 Robert of Namur, Lord of Beaufort, to whom entirely 
 I owe love and obeisance. And God grant me to do that 
 thing that may be to his pleasure." 
 
 The book was calculated to please everyone on the 
 side of the English. The vigour, the picturesqueness of 
 its narratives are unrivalled, and there is nothing sur- 
 prising in the immense success of this first work of 
 Froissart's youth. Whilst of the third redaction one 
 manuscript only remains to us, and only two of the second,
 
 36 FRO1SSART. 
 
 we still possess from thirty to forty manuscripts of the 
 original redaction of the first book of the Chronicles. 
 These manuscripts do not all end at the same point. 
 Some bring the history to a close at the siege of Bourdeilles 
 in 1369; others at the taking of Roche-sur-Yon ; others 
 again at the surrender of La Rochellein 1372. The author, 
 pursued by orders, brought each copy down to the date of 
 delivery, and the Chronicle became almost a running 
 review of events. The success was complete, the glory 
 immediate ; a certain Froissart, ditteur, was at last become 
 a writer of celebrity. 
 
 Little time, however, was given him to rest upon his 
 laurels ; the wars began again, and the Chronicle must be 
 resumed. It was, alas ! between Froissart's patrons that 
 the war broke out. On the 22nd April 1371, at the battle 
 of Bastweiler, Duke Wenceslas was captured by the troops 
 of the Duke of Juliers. Wenceslas attributed this un- 
 expected reverse to the ill-will of Robert of Namur, who, 
 on that day, commanded the reserves of the army of 
 Brabant ; and it was, in fact, the delay of the troops of 
 Namur that turned the chances of the battle to the 
 advantage of the enemy. In a pastourelle, composed about 
 this time, Froissart expresses the astonishment he feels at 
 the unforeseen defeat of a battalion of excellent troopers, 
 commanded by so famous a captain as the " damoisel de 
 Namur" a courteous expression of surprise, not without 
 a double meaning sufficiently unfriendly to Messire 
 Robert. The handsome Wenceslas, meanwhile, had to 
 pass a long year in prison, and Froissart did his best to 
 console him, by composing an appropriate chante-fable
 
 FINISHES FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 37 
 
 La Prison Amoureuse in which, by means of a transparent 
 allegory, he condemns the part played at Bastweiler by his 
 former patron. Froissart, it is evident, has espoused the 
 quarrel of Duke Wenceslas. We can understand, then, 
 why the name of Robert of Namur has disappeared from 
 the revised manuscripts of the Prologue to the Chronicles, 
 and why, in the Jolt Buisson de Jeumsse, the poet, in the 
 long and Homeric list of his lords and patrons, omits all 
 mention of him for whom he had compiled the first book 
 of his "Teat work.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PATRONS. 
 
 THE memory of Queen Philippa of England still hovered 
 over her native country ; and thanks to her it was, and to 
 that memory, that Froissart had been able to present him- 
 self at the Court of Brabant. The Duchess Jeanne, a 
 good and amiable princess, ever ready to help others, and 
 throughout her life a devoted protectress to the chronicler, 
 was sister-in-law to Queen Philippa, whose brother, 
 William IV. of Hainault, had been the Duchess Jeanne's 
 first husband. She had never had any children, and after 
 the death of William IV. the crown of Hainault passed 
 to his nephew, William of Bavaria, son of the elder sister of 
 Philippa. When Froissart returned to his own country, 
 Count William, a desperate, raving madman, had already 
 been confined for fifteen years within the walls of his 
 castle of le Quesnoy. " Tall, young, strong, dark, and lively, ' 
 he was to live there, in all, nearly thirty years, " and most of 
 the time both hands and feet had to be tied," Jean-le-Bel 
 tells us. It is not known whether his wife, a Lancastrian 
 princess, was among Froissart's protectors ; but his 
 younger brother, Duke Aubert of Bavaria, was one of the 
 first, as he was also the last, of the chronicler's patrons.
 
 THE PATRONS. 39 
 
 " Le due Aubert premi&rement 
 M'a k toute heure liement 
 Recueilli," 
 
 writes Froissart in 1373. Regent of Holland, Regent of 
 Zealand, Regent of Hainault, Aubert spent most of his 
 time in the north, far from the lugubrious Quesnoy, where 
 his brother for ever wrestled with phantoms. The eldest 
 son of Aubert, young William of Ostrevant, was Governor 
 of Hainault, and for this youthful knight Froissart seems 
 to have had a genuine affection. 
 
 The Duke and Duchess of Brabant and Duke Aubert 
 of Bavaria were not alone in their patronage of the 
 chronicler. Immediately on his return to his native 
 country, towards the end of the year 1369, Froissart had 
 gone to the castle of Beaumont to pay homage to 
 Messire Guy de Chatillon, third son of the Count of 
 Blois, and styled indifferently Guy de Chatillon or Guy 
 de Blois. It was in London, in 1362, that Froissart had 
 first met this young man, who was at once cousin to 
 Queen Philippa of England, to Duke Aubert, and to the 
 Duke of Juliers, grandson of the illustrious Jean de 
 Beaumont, and distantly related to Duke Wenceslas 
 of Luxemburg. The old Chateau of Beaumont in 
 Hainault, in which were still preserved the valuable 
 Chronicles of the Seigneur de Beaumont, was the favourite 
 residence of Messire Guy ; but he was able to be there 
 but little, a great love of martial adventure calling him 
 elsewhere. Messire Guy was preux by right of birth as 
 well as by temperament ; on his mother's side he belonged 
 to the house of Hainault; his father was of the quasi-
 
 40 FROISSART. 
 
 royal race of the Chatillon, and through the Chatillon 
 again, Guy found himself nephew of that Charles de Blois, 
 Duke of Brittany, who, later on, was to be enrolled among 
 the saints of the Church. Messire Guy was young, brave, 
 and of noble birth; he had fought at Poitiers; he had 
 known both fortune and misfortune ; he could not fail to 
 interest our chronicler. One cause only for reproach 
 could be found against him in the past; a prisoner in 
 London, after Poitiers, he had, in order to procure his 
 ransom, sold his inheritance, the comte of Blois. The 
 fault was grave, for on this question of the sale of an 
 inheritance, the Middle Ages had ideas that were biblical 
 in their inflexible severity: it was held inadmissible to 
 pay such a price for a mess of pottage, even though the 
 pottage should be served in a dish of gold. 
 
 In 1372 the eldest of the Chatillon died in early 
 manhood, and Guy, the youngest, received as his share 
 of the inheritance the lordship of Chimay, the lordship 
 of Beaumont, and several other rich estates in Hainault, 
 Holland, and Zealand. Enriched by this fortune, Messire 
 Guy could henceforward abandon himself to all those 
 liberal impulses dictated by a generous heart and a 
 lavish disposition. As it happened, it was at the moment 
 that Froissart was giving to the world the first chapters 
 of the Chronicles that Messire Guy returned from the 
 campaign of Guyenne to take possession of his inheritance. 
 He was betrothed to the niece of Robert of Namur : in the 
 suite of this prince he once more met with Froissart, happy 
 and celebrated, and lost no time in becoming a warm 
 admirer of the chronicler's talent. On the ipth September
 
 THE PATRONS. 41 
 
 1373 Froissart was established in the cure of Lestinnes- 
 les-Monts, the presentation to which belonged to Messire 
 Guy, who must have exercised his rights in favour of 
 the chronicler almost immediately after his own return to 
 Hainault. Froissart, who in the first manuscripts of the 
 Chronicles does not yet take the title of priest, will 
 henceforward sign himself "sire Jean Froissart, cure de 
 Lestinnes-les-Monts." The Buisson de Jeunesse bears 
 witness to his gratitude to his benefactor, when, after 
 naming the three lords of Blois, he describes in particular 
 his intimacy with Guy, and his obligations to him 
 
 " Mes seigneurs de Blois 
 Loys, Jehan et Gui ; des trois 
 Moult accointe a un temps fui ; 
 Et especialment de Gui 
 Et encor le suis tous les jours 
 Car pres de lui git mon sejour ; 
 C'est le bon sire de Beaumont 
 Qui m'ammoneste et me semont, 
 . . . Car, vrai, le vois-je souvent." 
 
 The young lord of Beaumont younger than Froissart 
 by some years hot, fiery, passionate, quick to admonish 
 and to reprove, must, in fact, have delivered more than 
 one lecture to the cur of Lestinnes on the subject of his 
 glaring predilection for the English ; for, on this subject, 
 he would certainly be of the same mind as the Duke 
 of Anjou, who, in the year 1381, caused fifty-six folios of 
 the Chronicles of Froissart, destined for England, to be 
 seized and confiscated. The father and grandfather of 
 Messire Guy had fought for France at Crcy ; the young
 
 42 FROISSART. 
 
 man himself had broken more than one sword both at 
 Poitiers and in Guyenne ; and the ransom that cost him 
 Soissons had left a long and bitter rancour in his heart. 
 When Froissart went to Beaumont to drink the good 
 wine and eat the grand dinners of the castle, he found 
 himself in a society that was essentially French. Up to 
 that time, it was on the testimony of those who had 
 fought for the English cause that he had almost 
 exclusively relied. At Beaumont, the French knights 
 in their turn were to relate to him the story of the 
 battles of Crecy and Poitiers. Thus, whilst distance and 
 change of fortune began to dim his memories of England, 
 the poet's ear was filled day by day with praises of the 
 conquered country. Already, indeed, France, with its 
 marvellous powers of revival, was beginning to rise from 
 its ashes, whilst England, so lately triumphant, was 
 wrapping itself in a mist of sadness and mourning. The 
 wind had changed and Froissart, since the days of his 
 childhood, had forgotten the art of making a feather fly 
 against the wind. 
 
 It is to Guy de Blois that we owe the last three books 
 of the history. " Count Guy of Blois," Froissart tells us, 
 " made me make the noble history." It was doubtless 
 to please his new patron that Froissart, whilst continuing 
 his work as a whole, set himself also to remodel the 
 commencement; in 1376 we find him already harnessed, 
 as it were, to a second redaction of the first book. 
 It is interesting to see what that splendid panegyric of 
 England becomes in the hands of the cure of Lestinnes. 
 The point of view has changed altogether. The first
 
 THE PATRONS. 43 
 
 version, written for one of the most valiant captains of 
 Edward III., was inspired throughout by the histories 
 heard from the English knights; this one, dedicated to 
 a Frenchman taken prisoner at Poitiers, faithfully reflects 
 the account given by the French combatants, whom the 
 author had met at Beaumont or at Brussels. Fascinated 
 by the desire to set down a fresh aspect of the truth, 
 Froissart was also, it is clear, no less urged by the instinctive 
 wish to make himself agreeable to his neighbour. 
 
 The second redaction of the first book of the Chronicles 
 has never had, nor deserves to have, the reputation of 
 the original version. There remain to us two copies only, 
 dating from the fifteenth century, transcribed probably 
 from a manuscript made for Guy de Chatillon. Messire 
 Guy was lord of Chimay ; the two copies which exist 
 came both from the castle of Chimay, and bear the arms 
 of a Count of Chimay of the fifteenth century. This little 
 fact proves to us how restricted was the demand for the 
 second redaction, an altogether inferior work, though it 
 contains some gems, such as the saynete of the game 
 of chess between the enamoured king, Edward III., and 
 the Countess of Salisbury. Too often, indeed, in this 
 work, done at a moment when he was still but little of 
 a Frenchman at heart, Froissart allows us to perceive 
 the weariness he felt in accomplishing a task done to 
 order. 
 
 The book, well written and good in tone, might please 
 its patron ; but it is not surprising that the public 
 continued to read the first redaction. Froissart's spirit 
 always reflected with so much faithfulness his immediate
 
 44 FROISSART. 
 
 environment that it was impossible for him to recover 
 the splendid impulse of his first effort, written in the 
 midst of courts and camps. Here we no longer find that 
 brilliant colouring, vivid as the tints of some illuminated 
 missal ; all is in neutral grey, decent, discreet, peaceable, 
 a little tame. The work resembles those long days of 
 tranquil comfort that flowed peacefully onwards in the 
 presbytery of Lestinnes.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WENCESLAS, DUKE OF BRABANT. 
 
 WE have already seen that among Froissart's neigh- 
 bours at Lestinnes he numbered not only the Lord of 
 Beaumont, but the Duke and Duchess of Brabant, who 
 owned a castle in the adjacent country. It is certain 
 that in this brilliant court, wholly dominated by the 
 French spirit, Froissart would find nothing to counteract 
 the influence of Guy de Blois; for was not Wenceslas 
 the son of that blind and good King of Bohemia, who 
 came to die for France at Cr6cy? It was, however, not 
 as chronicler but as poet that Froissart found especial 
 favour with Wenceslas. 
 
 " The Duke Wenceslas," Froissart tells us, " was liberal, 
 sweet, courteous, amiable, and noble in arms, and was 
 likely to have achieved many things had he lived long. . . . 
 In his time he did much good. The schism that was in 
 the Church greatly displeased him, and that he showed 
 me oftentimes, for I was privy of his acquaintance. Now, 
 in that in my days I travelled a great part of the world, 
 two hundred great princes I knew, but none more humble, 
 nor debonair, nor treatable than they were (that was 
 this noble prince one, and the other, my good master
 
 46 FROISSART. 
 
 the Lord Guy of Blois, who commanded me to make 
 this history) ; these were the two princes in my day who 
 for humility, largesse, and bounty, without any malice, 
 were the most to be praised ; for they lived liberally of 
 their own, without oppressing their people, or raising up 
 of any evil customs in their lands." 
 
 The years spent by Froissart at Lestinnes between 
 his two noble patrons were undoubtedly the happiest 
 of his life. Money anxieties no longer pressed upon him ; 
 he lived at ease and in comfort in his presbytery on the 
 revenue brought to him by his benefice, and by the liberal 
 gifts of the two lords. Whilst Count Guy commands 
 the writing of the Chronicles, Froissart, in collaboration 
 with the brilliant Wenceslas, is composing that long 
 romance in verse Mdiador so much admired by the 
 beau monde of the period. All this was well paid for; 
 sometimes in money, sometimes in measures of corn. 
 Froissart lived at his ease. During the ten. years of 
 his residence at Lestinnes, he spent, he tells us, more 
 than 500 livres at the wine taverns ; and when 
 he had had enough of tavern society, he had only to 
 saddle his horse, and go and dine at Beaumont, or else 
 at the castle of the Duke of Brabant, if the Duke happened 
 to be residing there. More than once, too, the cur of 
 Lestinnes visited that magnificent Court of Brussels, 
 where fete endlessly succeeded fete, and each so splendid 
 that Maitre Eustache Deschamps himself Maitre Eus- 
 tache, so furious with Flanders, its heavy rains, its mud, 
 its restless and insolent people, its eternal mustard-sauce 
 forgets all his grievances in his regret for the beautiful
 
 WENCESLAS, DUKE OF BRABANT. 4 7 
 
 capital of Brabant " Brussels, where the baths are so 
 charming." For that matter however, without quitting 
 his own village, the good chronicler could provide himself 
 with suitable society. He constantly saw the provost 
 of Binche ; and a certain Henri Froissart, who bought 
 a house at Lestinnes in 1379, was, one may imagine, a 
 relation of the cure" become the great man of the family. 
 
 Taking them, then, as a whole, the ten years that 
 followed Froissart's installation in his first cure were 
 the most equable, the most peaceful of his life. They 
 were also the least brilliant for his reputation. The 
 verses that he wrote for Duke Wenceslas, the prose that 
 he re-wrote for the Count of Blois, have no longer the 
 grandeur and the poetry of his first redaction of the 
 Chronicles, as they have not yet the movement, the 
 marvellous picturesqueness and truth to nature, that his 
 work was to show some years later. His residence at 
 Lestinnes was a season of repose between his wandering 
 youth and his active old age. 
 
 On the 7th December 1383 died Wenceslas, Duke 
 of Luxemburg and Duke of Brabant by his marriage. 
 Hardly five months previously, he had paid Froissart 
 more than twelve livres for a manuscript that romance 
 of Mttiador, of which he composed the lyric portion, whilst 
 the curd of Lestinnes carried on the narrative he had not 
 yet read. His death not only brought to Froissart the 
 loss of a generous patron, but that of the protector for 
 whom amongst all his protectors since the death of the 
 Queen of England he felt the most affectionate devotion. 
 And, indeed, the songs in Mttiador, recently brought to
 
 48 FRO I SS ART. 
 
 light again by M. Longnon, seem to emanate from a 
 good and loyal soul, tender and chrivalrous. Froissart 
 says nothing of the cruel death that put an end to a life 
 wholly passed in making war and in making verses. 
 With a reticence more touching than any outburst of 
 grief, he tells us simply : " It pleased God to end 
 the days of the Duke of Brabant. . . . He died in the 
 flower of his youth, for the which I, who have written and 
 chronicled this history, too greatly pity him in that he 
 had not longer life, as much as eighty years or more. . . ." 
 It pleased God to end the days of the Duke of 
 Brabant Cornel van Zantfliet, who loved him less, finds 
 courage to tell us the truth : Duke Wenceslas died of 
 leprosy. 
 
 Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, so warm a friend of 
 Froissart in general, nevertheless regrets that no mention 
 of this hideous end is to be found in the Chronicles. On 
 the contrary, with an abrupt and touching change of 
 theme, the cure" of Lestinnes is lavish in his praises of 
 the Wenceslas of former days, "so noble, gentle, gay, 
 wise, quick at arms, liberal, affable, courteous, and 
 amiable." I own that, for my part, I find in all this 
 a most poignant proof of the affection felt by Froissart 
 for the Duke of Brabant, that poor mirror of chivalry 
 suddenly shattered after so tragic a fashion. To Cornel 
 van Zantfliet it may be left to moralise on the picture 
 presented by Duke Wenceslas, still young, and only the 
 other day still so handsome, allowing the nobles, the 
 citizens, the country people, to penetrate to his chamber, 
 and contemplate his body ravaged by leprosy. How
 
 WENCESLAS, DUKE OF BRABANT. 49 
 
 could Froissart have described to us that repulsive form, 
 that broken voice, and those words of farewell : " May 
 this spectacle teach you humility, since God has per- 
 mitted that my body, once so robust and fair, should 
 be stricken thus to lower my pride"? The familiar 
 friend of the handsome Duke Wenceslas would surely 
 feel his hand tremble too much to write such words as 
 these.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHAPLAIN OF THE COUNT OF BLOIS. 
 
 SOME months before the death of Duke Wenceslas, the 
 good sire de Beaumont lost the last of his brothers. Guy 
 de Blois succeeded in consequence to the entire inheritance 
 of the Chatillon ; the estates in Holland and in Zealand, 
 the estates in Hainault and in Picardy, as well as the rich 
 county of Blois, with its appertaining castles and manors. 
 Count of Blois and Count of Dunois, Messire Guy could 
 no longer hide himself in a corner of Hainault. His 
 castle on the Loire claimed him ; and at the moment 
 of setting out, he attached to his person the cure of 
 Lestinnes, offering him one of the canonries of Chimay 
 in exchange for his cure. It was promotion for the 
 chronicler ; and, moreover, as private chaplain to the 
 Count of Blois, the canon of Chimay would find himself 
 once more in the active current of his time ; he 
 escaped from the plebeian tranquillity that would hence- 
 forth reign in the parish of Lestinnes, deprived of the 
 society of the sire de Beaumont and of the Duke of 
 Brabant. In 1384 he decided to follow his patron to the 
 banks of the Loire ; but, some months later, he returned 
 to Hainault with Messire Guy, who was fighting in
 
 THE CHAPLAIN OF THE COUNT OF BLOIS. 51 
 
 Flanders for the King of France. We have no knowledge 
 as to whether Froissart spent the summer in the castle 
 of Beaumont, where the Countess was living, and from 
 whence, seriously ill and in high fever, Guy de Blois had 
 himself carried in a litter to the field of battle ; or whether, 
 as might be inferred from the length of his descriptions, the 
 chronicler followed his valiant lord to the siege of Beau- 
 bourg. When the brief campaign was over, the Count of 
 Blois went to repose himself in the Ble"sois ; but Froissart 
 remained nearly a year in the north, to complete his notes 
 on the troubles in Flanders. 
 
 From this winter of 1385, passed at Valenciennes, may 
 be dated a more intimate connection with Duke Aubert of 
 Bavaria. Through a happy chance, the castle of le Ques- 
 noy, so often abandoned to its gloomy fate, was animated 
 this winter with unaccustomed life. Duke Aubert quitted 
 his favourite residence at The Hague, in order to inhabit 
 le Quesnoy, together with the Duchess, his two younger 
 daughters, and his son, a youth of twenty, about to marry 
 Margaret of Burgundy. Le Quesnoy is only some fifteen 
 miles from Valenciennes, and Froissart, one may be sure, 
 assisted at the festivities of the ducal family. The mar- 
 riage had been arranged by his good patroness, the 
 Duchess of Brabant. An inveterate matchmaker, she 
 prided herself on having brought about the union of the 
 daughter of her nephew, Duke Aubert, with the son of her 
 niece, the Duchess of Burgundy, whilst, moreover, the hand 
 of the sister of the bridegroom was, at the same time, 
 granted in marriage to the brother of the bride. 
 
 A half-nephew of Duke Aubert had come from Bavaria
 
 52 FROISSART. 
 
 to assist at this double marriage. One day, in talking over 
 family affairs, he spoke of a niece of his, a young girl, 
 thirteen years of age, not without charm, pretty, indeed, 
 rather than otherwise. The old Duchess seemed to wake 
 up : " Supposing we marry her to the King of France ? " 
 she said ; and, in this way, an old woman's caprice brought 
 into France Isabeau of Bavaria. Froissart was still at 
 Valenciennes when the young girl arrived at le Quesnoy. 
 She was a fresh little German, too simple and homebred to 
 please the taste of France. Her aunt, the Duchess, dressed 
 her in the fashion, taught her a few words of French, and 
 initiated her in the ways of the world even as Esther 
 went through the discipline of the perfumed baths before 
 she was brought into the presence of the king. When all 
 was duly prepared, the young girl was taken on a pilgrim- 
 age to Amiens, where, as though by chance, she met the 
 youthful king, Charles VI. The stratagem succeeded ; the 
 marriage took place a few days later, and Duke Aubert 
 became uncle to the King of France. 
 
 Festivities hardly less splendid recalled Froissart to 
 France towards the spring of the year 1386. Life was 
 indeed carried on with great splendour at Blois, " as Count 
 Guy well knew how to do." The only son of the Count 
 and Countess, a child scarcely nine years of age, had just 
 been married to the daughter of the Duke of Berry, uncle 
 to the king. This almost royal alliance flattered the pride of 
 the Chatillon ; no trouble had been spared to bring it 
 about, and the marriage contract secured to the bride of 
 the weakly child a more than princely dowry on the 
 revenues of .Blois. It was imprudent, perhaps ; but little
 
 THE CHAPLAIN OF THE COUNT OF B LOIS. 53 
 
 thought was given to that in the midst of the fetes and 
 " minstrellings " (uienestrandies) that welcomed to the 
 banks of the Loire the young cousin of the King of 
 France. 
 
 The castle of Blois was one of the finest in the kingdom. 
 Somewhat against its master's will, it rapidly became a 
 patriotic centre, where the Duke of Burgundy and the 
 Duke of Berry prepared the reconciliation of the Duke of 
 Brittany with France. These intrigues might please the 
 Countess, an ambitious woman, fond of power, and en- 
 chanted to play a part in politics ; but Count Guy saw 
 with no goodwill the welcome prepared at Blois for Mont- 
 fort, for the Englishman, the hereditary enemy of all his 
 race. For some time past a slow malady had been under- 
 mining the powers of Guy de Blois ; too weak, with his 
 enfeebled health, openly to oppose the wishes of his wife 
 and the two royal dukes, he saw with terror the hour 
 approaching when he would be compelled to receive the 
 execrated usurper under his own roof. At the last moment 
 he flung himself upon his horse and rode without stopping 
 to take refuge in his old fortress of Chateau-Renaud, at the 
 other end of the B16sois. " For Count Guy made no great 
 account of the coming of the Duke of Brittany," the 
 chronicler tells us. A singular master of the house, 
 truly ! 
 
 In the midst of these fetes and "reveaux" at Blois, 
 the canon of Chimay finished his second book. But 
 in going over it for the last time, he perceived that 
 the work was not satisfactory ; the events in Flanders 
 had absorbed the attention of the chronicler ; too
 
 54 FROISSART. 
 
 little had been said of the wars in the south. What 
 did he know of the great feats of arms that were 
 taking place in Toulousain, in Castille, and in Portugal ? 
 How was he to write at Blois of what was going on 
 in Gascony ? How was he " to know the truth of 
 deeds done in far countries " ? Froissart found one 
 answer only to this question that haunted him ; he must 
 make the journey to Gascony, and on the spot inquire 
 of living witnesses concerning the great deeds recently 
 accomplished there. This solution had in it nothing 
 that was displeasing to the adventurous chronicler : 
 " As yet, I thank God, I have understanding and 
 remembrance of all things past, and my wit quick 
 and sharp enough to conceive all things showed unto 
 me touching my principal matter, and my body as yet 
 able to endure and to suffer pain." Why then moulder 
 in a turret of Blois, when yonder, among the mountains 
 of the south, history throbs and moves, all ardent 
 and alive ? 
 
 Froissart had no difficulty in obtaining from Count 
 Guy permission to take a journey that would be of 
 such essential service to the Chronicle, dear to the 
 patron as to the writer. At the Court of Orthez, in 
 Beam, knights of all nations were to be met with, for the 
 sovereign of the little states of Foix and Beam had, 
 alone in Europe at that moment, preserved an absolute 
 impartiality in the midst of the wars between French 
 and English, between the partisans of Pedro the Cruel, 
 and the partisans of the Transtamare. At his hospitable 
 table the knights of the Duke of Anjou drank with
 
 THE CHAPLAIN OF THE COUNT OF BLOIS. 55 
 
 the Gascon captains in the pay of England ; the 
 soldiers of the two Spanish pretenders kept company 
 together, without righting together ; nay, at the Christmas 
 festivities, two Clementine bishops even had been 
 seen dining peaceably side by side with Their Urbanist 
 Eminences. It was the spot of all others for gaining 
 information in abundance about all sorts of countries 
 and people of every degree ; and thither the canon 
 of Chimay resolved to direct his steps. In the autumn 
 then, of the year 1388, he quitted the castle of Blois, 
 furnished with letters of recommendation from his lord 
 and master, to the high and mighty Prince Gaston 
 Phoebus, Count of Foix, and sovereign Viscount of Beam ; 
 to whom also the historian took as a present four fine 
 hounds Tristan, Hector, Roland, and Brun.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE JOURNEY TO BEARN. 
 
 AMONG all the episodes in that Odyssey of chivalry, 
 known as Froissart's Chronicles, there is none more 
 vivid, more marvellously picturesque, or touched by a 
 surer hand into clearer relief, than this episode of the 
 journey to Beam. His fifty years notwithstanding, our 
 canon, with his four hounds in leash and a new romance 
 in his bag, sets out, his head in the air and with a light 
 heart, in quest of adventure. His journey makes him 
 young again ; gay and confident, he goes on his way, 
 certain of bringing to a successful termination the great 
 work of his life. The somewhat heavy historian of the 
 second book has given place to the artist full of life and 
 spirit, ready to seek his inspiration on the high road, in 
 inns, and from chance companions. 
 
 He pauses however at Pamiers, partly in the hope 
 of falling in with some company on his journey, partly 
 because the "country was delectable," but chiefly in the 
 desire to get information that may be useful to him. 
 On the third day, good fortune sends in his way one 
 of the best friends of the Count of Foix, Messire Espaing 
 de Lyon, "a valiant and an 'expert man of arms . . .
 
 THE JOURNEY TO BEARN. 57 
 
 about the age of fifty years." Sir Espaing was a true 
 Gascon, w.ho, having said his morning orisons, liked to 
 spend the remainder of the day in " conversing (a jangler) 
 and in demanding of tidings." So indefatigable a talker 
 was the very companion for our chronicler ; Messire 
 Espaing had seen everything, had heard everything, and 
 desired nothing better than the occasion to relate every- 
 thing he knew. During the eight days spent on the 
 road between Pamiers and Orthez, not a stronghold, 
 not a shattered end of wall, but suggests to him some 
 appropriate history. Froissart pauses for a moment to 
 look well at one fortress or the other, and that is all the 
 criticism he brings to bear upon the history told in con- 
 nection with it ; for this past master in the art of reporting 
 knows nothing of the science of the Ecole des Chartes. 
 He repeats for the souls of the dead " a Paternoster, an 
 Ave Maria, a De Profundis and Fidelium " (for, after all, 
 one is a canon) ; and in the evening, at the inn, " as soon," 
 he tells us, "as we were descended at our lodging, 
 whether it were in the evening or in the morning, I wrote 
 over all the words of Messire Espaing de Lyon, the better 
 thereby to have them in remembrance, for writing is the 
 best remembrance that may be." This was not perhaps, 
 a very rigorous system for preserving the exact truth ; 
 but these histories, set down still warm, so to speak, 
 from the lips that uttered them, have preserved a quite 
 incomparable life and colour and brilliancy. ..." Have 
 you in your chronicle the scrinunish of such a squire?" 
 asks Messire Espaing ; and the brave history unfolds 
 itself in ample detail until the hour for supper or for
 
 58 FROfSSART. 
 
 bed arrives, and " the knight ceased of his talking." " But 
 I remembered well where we left," says Froissart, "against 
 the next day. ..." When everything has been told, he 
 turns to his interlocutor, and thanks him with a charming 
 naivete, full of sincere emotion. "'Ah, Saint Mary, sir,' 
 quoth I to the knight, ' how your words be to me right 
 agreeable ; for it hath done me great pleasure all that 
 ever ye have showed me, which shall not be lost, for it 
 shall be put in remembrance and chronicled in the history 
 I have enterprised, if God will send me grace to return to 
 the county of Hainault and the city of Valenciennes 
 whereas I was born.' " 
 
 In approaching Orthez, Froissart tries to learn as much 
 as possible concerning the lord of the place, Gaston 
 Phoebus, the celebrated Count of Foix. Messire Espaing 
 allows it to be understood that he is a strange and much- 
 dreaded knight, and in speaking of him takes a mysterious 
 tone, full of reticences and secret meanings, that only 
 inflame Froissart's curiosity the more, He is a lord much 
 given to imagining (c'est un siegneur moult imaginatif\ 
 always ready to suspect evil and to punish it ; some- 
 times even he punishes what is not evil but good. Thus, 
 one of his near cousins, a young and valiant knight, having 
 refused to betray his master for the benefit of the Count 
 of Foix, the Count killed him with his own hand. " Ah, 
 Saint Mary," cries the canon of Chimay, all scared, " was 
 not this a great cruelty ?" " Whatever it was," quoth the 
 knight, " thus it was ; for an he be angry, there is no 
 pardon." 
 
 At other times, Messire Espaing has gayer histories
 
 THE JOURNEY TO BEARN, 59 
 
 to relate, and Froissart faithfully records them all ; since 
 no detail can be held worthless that touches so great a lord 
 It is thus we learn, among other things, that the Count 
 of Foix " loved no great fire on his hearth ; howbeit he 
 had wood enough thereabout." But one day, walking 
 in his galleries " when there was a great frost, and very 
 cold, he saw the fire so little, he said to the knights 
 and squires about him : ' Sirs, this is but a small fire and 
 the day so cold.' " Hardly had he spoken, when one of 
 the lords of his court descends the twenty-four steps 
 of the staircase, seizes in his arms an ass that was 
 entering, laden with wood, returns to the gallery with 
 his burthen, and casts it down upon the hearth, the 
 ass's heels in the air ! Froissart accepts this fable with 
 the credulity of a child ; and, indeed, who should be 
 believed if not an eye-witness of the fact ? 
 
 But although listening willingly to stories of this 
 description, it is the history of the Count of Foix's 
 domestic troubles that Froissart is, above all, anxious 
 to hear. Messire Espaing tells just enough to excite the 
 liveliest curiosity in the chronicler. 
 
 " Was ever the Count married ? " 
 
 "Yea, truly, and is yet, but his wife is in Navarre, for the 
 king there is her brother." 
 
 " Has he any children ? " 
 
 " Yes, two sons that are bastards." 
 
 " Has he never had a legitimate child ? " 
 
 " Yes, he had a fair son, who had the father's heart, and 
 all the country loved him." 
 
 " Sir, what became of that son, an it may be known ? "
 
 60 FROISSART. 
 
 Messire Espaing replies by a mournful silence 
 and Froissart feels that some terrible history lies behind 
 this disappearance of the Count's son. But what is it? 
 He asks in vain ; there is no answer. Within sight of the 
 roofs of Morlaas he entreats Sir Espaing, for the love of 
 God, to tell him the truth. 
 
 "Then the knight studied a little, and said: 'Sir, the 
 manner of his death is too piteous ; I will not speak 
 thereof.' "
 
 GASTON PHCEBCS COUNT DE FOIX.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE COURT AT ORTHEZ. 
 
 ON the 25th November, at sunset, the travellers arrived at 
 Orthez. Messire Espaing alighted at his own house, and 
 Sir John Froissart at the inn of the Moon, where he lodged 
 at the expense of the Count of Foix, by whom, it would 
 appear, his arrival was expected. During the evening, a 
 messenger came to the inn to fetch the chronicler and 
 conduct him to the castle, for the Count " was the lord of 
 all the world that most desired to speak with strangers, 
 and to hear tidings." It was already dark night, but it 
 was the habit of the Count to rise at sunset and go to bed 
 towards morning, and Froissart found him walking in his 
 galleries. He was a man about fifty-nine years of age, we 
 are told by Froissart, who flatters him a little in describing 
 him " I say I have in my time seen many knights, kings, 
 princes and other, but I never saw none like him of 
 personage, nor of so fair form, nor so well made. His 
 visage fair, sanguine and smiling, his eyes clear and 
 amorous, whereas he list to set his regard." His voice was 
 wonderfully sweet, his carriage noble. He never wore a 
 hat, and had beautiful dishevelled hair ; his long hands 
 were singularly white and well cared for. This handsome
 
 62 FROISSART. 
 
 prince gave cordial welcome to Froissart, telling him in 
 good French how great was the esteem that he felt for an 
 historian of such fame. " And said to me how the history 
 that I had begun should hereafter be more praised than 
 any other ; and the reason, he said, why, was this, fair 
 master ; how that fifty year past there had been more mar- 
 vellous deeds of arms done in the world than in three 
 hundred years before that." 
 
 At the court of the Visconti or of the Este in Italy, 
 Froissart must have met sundry other handsome tyrants, 
 illustrious and lettered, subtle and formidable, cast in the 
 same mould as Gaston Phcebus, Count of Foix ; but 
 probably they found no such courteous words to bestow 
 on the stranger-secretary, for Froissart makes no pro- 
 fession of love for them ; he shrinks, indeed, from the 
 abyss of cruelty and egotism he discerns behind their 
 courtly manners. But for his host at Orthez he has an 
 absolute enthusiasm ; he is never weary of singing his 
 praises. " In everything he was so perfect that he cannot 
 be praised too much ; he loved that ought to be loved, 
 and hated that ought to be hated." This great lord led a 
 royal and decadent existence. By sheer force of will, he 
 turned night into day, not only for himself, but for all the 
 court of Orthez, and for all parts of the town that 
 depended on the castle. The Count held his audience, at 
 the earliest, towards five o'clock in the afternoon ; but a 
 better moment still was towards one in the morning, for it 
 was then that he conversed most willingly with those 
 about him. Apart from those days, recurring with some 
 frequency, that he passed in hunting, the Count never
 
 THE COURT AT ORTHEZ. 63 
 
 rose until a good hour after none (three in the afternoon). 
 How much of the sentiment of caste, of the conscious- 
 ness of his own superiority, was implied in all this, it 
 would be difficult for us to conceive. Doubtless the 
 Count never perceived that he was deranging the normal 
 life of an entire town to suit his own good pleasure. 
 
 On leaving his chamber then, about five o'clock, and 
 entering the galleries of his castle, he found his court 
 already assembled. This was the moment for the pre- 
 sentation of any stranger of note ; and there were many 
 such, for visitors came from afar to see this magnificent 
 and hospitable court, the one oasis of peace in the midst 
 of the wars and schisms of the end of the century. A little 
 later on, the couriers were introduced, and it was noted, 
 not without wonder, that before their arrival the Count was 
 already acquainted with the news that they were bringing. 
 These various receptions over, the Count rose, passed 
 between the double line of lords, of stranger knights, of 
 clerks and townspeople, and entered thehall, where he made 
 in general a light repast of fowl ; for the Count of Foix was 
 a true Gascon ; he loved talking better than eating, and 
 had no need of wine as a stimulant. His repast ended, 
 he returned to the galleries, a sort of covered loggia, 
 constructed without the keep, above the great Hall, 
 and forming an important part of the palaces of the 
 fourteenth century ; those of Orthez, especially wide and 
 well-lighted, might compare favourably with the fine 
 galleries still to be seen at Pierrefonds. It was there that 
 the Count liked to walk to and fro, talking with those 
 about him " very sweetly and lovingly," and pausing from
 
 64 FROISSART. 
 
 time to time in the embrasure of the large windows 
 that looked out upon the courtyard of the keep. At eight 
 o'clock in the evening he asked for wine, and retired 
 again to his room until midnight. During these hours of 
 respite, the courtiers could at last attend a little to their 
 own affairs ; they would go off briskly to the town, talking 
 and "janglant" together. 
 
 Froissart, among others, would return to the hotel of the 
 Moon, where he supped in company with the knights. 
 Thanks to Messire Espaing de Lyon, he was acquainted 
 more or less with every one. The Bastard of Mauleon, 
 who was also lodging at the sign of the Moon, related to 
 him the wars of Gascony ; the English and Spaniards 
 talked to him of Castille and Navarre ; the knights of the 
 province made a circle round the fire " abiding for mid- 
 night that the Count should go to supper" chatting 
 among themselves of arms and news. " Sir John," they 
 would demand, " have ye in your history anything of this 
 matter that I speak of?" Or :" Sir John, are ye well 
 informed of my life ? " They asked nothing better, these 
 brave and clamorous knights, than to be allowed to talk ; 
 and Froissart asked nothing better than to listen to and 
 record their histories. When throats grew dry, wine was 
 called for. One evening " it was brought and we drank. 
 Then the Bascot l of Mauleon said to me : ' I have had yet 
 other adventures, which I have not showed.' " In the midst 
 of the narrative, the great bell of the castle sounded high 
 and strong to summon all the people of Orthez who were 
 
 1 Bastard.
 
 THE COURT AT ORTHEZ. 65 
 
 bidden to the supper of the Count of Foix. " Then two 
 squires made them ready, and lighted up torches, and so 
 we went up to the castle ; and so did all other knights and 
 squires that were lodged in the town." 
 
 It was in the heart of winter. The bise blew harshly ; 
 the icy roads seemed more frozen than ever after the 
 comfort and warmth of the big hall of the inn. But 
 what of that? It was the common fate of courtiers in the 
 fourteenth century, when the great lords chose to keep late 
 hours, and there was not space in their castles to accom- 
 modate all the court. In vain the poets rebel against the 
 doubtful beds of the taverns, and the nocturnal dangers of 
 the roads. In vain does Eustache Deschamps execrate 
 the nightly walk 
 
 " L'aller de nuit, qui trop me fait dolent." 
 
 Rheumatisms must be conquered, since it was not 
 possible for every one to lodge at the castle. But, at least, 
 at other courts, the unlucky courtier, compelled to go out 
 at the hour of midnight, could return to his own home ; 
 whereas, at Orthez, the night's business was but just 
 begun. Froissart is not silent on the inconveniences of 
 this custom, the wind and the rain and the midnight 
 drcnchings 
 
 " Six semaines devant Noel, 1 
 Et quatre apres, de mon hostel 
 A mie nuit je me partois 
 Et droit au chastel m'en allois. 
 Quel temps qu'il faisoit, pluie ou vent, 
 Aller m'y convenoit ! Souvent 
 
 1 The spelling of the original has been retained. 
 K
 
 66 FROISSART. 
 
 Estois, je vous dis, mouille ; 
 Mais j'estois bien accueille 
 Du comte ; il me faisoit des ris. 
 Adonc j'estois tout gueris. 
 Et ossi, d'entree premiere, 
 En la salle avoir tel lumiere 
 (Ou en sa chambre) k son souper 
 Que on y veoit ossi cler 
 Que nulle clarte peut estre. 
 C'estoit un paradis terrestre, 
 Et je 1'y comparois souvent." 
 
 Arrived at the castle, the guests collected without the 
 Count's chamber to await the moment of his appearance, 
 a moment sometimes delayed until a full hour after mid- 
 night. When the door was at length opened, twelve 
 varlets ranged themselves before him, bearing twelve lighted 
 torches, which shone with a great light, comparable with 
 that of day. They went slowly towards the great hall, 
 where many tables stood dressed for supper, and where at 
 the upper table the Count, seated alone, eat but little and 
 drank hardly at all. None dared speak to him, unless 
 called upon to do so in answer to a question. Often, to pass 
 the time, the Count demanded music, and Froissart remarks 
 on the harmony of the choirs of Orthez and the excellence 
 of the organs. Did they perchance sing the Chanson des 
 Montagues, which a tradition of the coimtry of Beam refers 
 to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix ? 
 
 The Count remained seated at table, without eating, for 
 about two hours, whilst his clerks sung to him rondeaux 
 and virelais. He greatly liked these entertainments, "and 
 in all minstrelsies (mfaestrandies) found great diversion." 
 Thus it was become a sort of habit at the court of Foix to
 
 THE COURT AT ORTHEZ. 67 
 
 interrupt the long ceremonious repasts, where so little was 
 eaten, with scenes of comedy, acrobatic feats, the rhymes 
 of some wandering minstrel, and above all, by masked 
 ballets. The Count saw with ever-renewed pleasure these 
 "strange entremets" as Froissart calls them, these inter- 
 mezzi of songs and dances, which were carried at Orthez to 
 a rare perfection. So much so, that when, some years 
 later, it was proposed to introduce these ballets at the court 
 of Charles VI. of France, Messire Yvain de Foix, one of 
 the bastards of Gaston de Foix, was appealed to for help. 
 And he it was who, so disastrously for himself and for 
 France, organised that fatal Dance of the Satyrs, in which 
 the King lost his recovered reason, and had almost lost 
 his life. 
 
 They arranged matters better at Foix ; for although 
 these games took place almost every day, nothing is said of 
 accidents. Songs, dances, disguises, succeeded each other 
 until the end of supper ; then the Count, rising, went 
 back into the galleries, where he would hold lively converse 
 for some time with his courtiers. Afterwards, towards the 
 early hours of the morning, there was reading aloud. 
 Froissart expatiates with delight on these stances, of which, 
 it is true, he himself was the hero. " While I read," he 
 tells us, " there was none durst speak any word, because the 
 Count would I should be well understanded." The reading 
 was, in fact, in the highest degree interesting to the reader, 
 since it was a work of his own that he gave in the midst of 
 the general attention, a romance in verse that he had 
 brought as an offering to the Count of Foix ; but we can 
 feel nothing but pity for the unhappy courtiers, condemned,
 
 68 FROISSAXT. 
 
 during entire weeks, to listen, towards three o'clock in the 
 morning, to an interminable romance of the Knights of the 
 Round Table ! The Count, however, was not chary in his 
 praises : 
 
 " II me dit : ' Cest un beau metier, 
 Beau maitre, de faire tel choses ! ' " 
 
 Then to the author, hoarse but beaming, he would pass 
 the cup at which he had just moistened his own lips. This 
 marked the close of the evening. The courtiers, falling 
 with sleep, rallied their scattered wits, and vied with each 
 other in encomiums, which Gaston Phoebus knew how to 
 reward with a few amiable words. Often he conversed a 
 little with Froissart, " not in .Gascon, but in good and fair 
 French." Finally, rising, he once more passed round the 
 wine, and dismissed his exhausted court.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 M^LIADOR. 
 
 THIS romance that Froissart read each night at the court 
 of Gaston Phoebus, everyone, in the course of a year or 
 two, will be able to read for himself, should he feel so dis- 
 posed. Lost since the year 1440, the book of Meliador, so 
 famous in its day, seemed to have disappeared without 
 hope of recovery, when, about two years ago, the learned 
 M. Longnon, of the Institut, whilst examining at the Archives 
 Nationales certain judicial registers bound in old parch- 
 ment, discovered in these bindings fragments of Mttiador. 
 It was an event in the world of the romancists. These 
 registers had been written towards 1650, in a large town 
 situated in the north of Burgundy, Cloux-en-Auxois. Who 
 should say whether other bookbinders of northern Bur- 
 gundy might not have helped themselves from the same 
 source ? With this idea, M. Longnon had the foresight to 
 draw up a table of the proper names that he had found in 
 the recovered parchments a little index that might some 
 day serve as a useful indication to the fortunate amateur, 
 who should find himself the possessor of bindings done in 
 the neighbourhood of Semur-en-Auxois towards the middle 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 But it was for M. Longnon himself that Fate reserved
 
 yo FROISSART. 
 
 the reward of his labours. One November afternoon in 1 893, 
 whilst working in the Bibliotheque Nationale, M. Longnon 
 was engaged in looking through the catalogue of manu- 
 scripts. His joy may be imagined on reading there : 
 
 Roman de Camel et de Hermondine (in-folio). 
 
 Camel and Hermondine, it must . be explained, were 
 names both of which had appeared in the fragments 
 discovered on the registers of Cloux-en-Auxois. M. 
 Longnon caused the enormous volume to be brought 
 to him. The title, the first leaf and the last, alone were 
 wanting. It was the romance of Mttiador almost in its 
 entirety. 
 
 To recover a famous poem lost for more than four 
 centuries, must be an absolutely unmixed pleasure. 
 To read it, above all to copy it, when it numbers 
 30,600 lines, must be a more doubtful joy. But, in 
 the interests of science, the true savant will spare 
 himself no trouble. M. Longnon at once undertook 
 this formidable transcript ; and being generous as he is 
 erudite, and aware that the author of these pages was 
 occupied with a book upon Froissart, he brought to her, 
 as fast as he progressed, the fruit of his labours. At the 
 moment at which these lines appear, there is assuredly no 
 one in the world but he and I myself, who have read the 
 romance of Meliador ; as we are, without doubt, in the 
 last four hundred years at least, the only readers it has 
 had. Nor can we ever have had many competitors; for 
 Mttiador is one of the longest poems in the world ; longer 
 than the entire Iliad, as long as the ALneid, twice as long 
 as the Divina Commedia. It almost reaches the dimen-
 
 MELIADOR. 71 
 
 sions of the endless and unended Faery Queen of Spenser. 
 The world has no longer the leisure for romances of this 
 calibre. 
 
 Hermondine, only daughter and heiress of the King 
 of Scotland, lives in Northumberland, at the castle of 
 M ontgries, with her cousin Floree, who acts as her duenna, 
 the fathers of the two princesses being absent at the wars 
 in Scotland. One day that these damosels are looking out 
 from a window of the keep, they see a knight who has 
 brought a stag to bay in the trenches of the castle. It 
 is their neighbour, Sir Camel de Camois, with whom they 
 are not yet acquainted. Enchanted with a diversion 
 that breaks the dulness of a heavy July afternoon, the 
 young girls hasten to welcome their unexpected guest. 
 Camel remains to dinner at the castle. He converses 
 with his charming hostess, but he has no eyes but 
 for the Princess Hermondine, pretty as a dream, and 
 roguish and gay in all the grace of her thirteen years. 
 Camel, who is at once ambitious and passionate, falls 
 madly in love with this charming young girl, who holds 
 in her child's hand, like a ball to toss in sport, the 
 powerful kingdom of Scotland. In the weeks that follow, 
 he returns frequently to the castle ; he returns too fre- 
 quently, and Floree counsels her young cousin to show 
 more reserve with so forward a lovec. " What ! " cries 
 Hermondine, " it is for me that he comes? Why, I have 
 never even thought of love." 
 
 " Ne point je ne pense a tel chose ; 
 J'auroie aussi chier une rose 
 Que 1'aniour de nul chevalier ! "
 
 72 FROISSART. 
 
 Meanwhile the father of Florae returns from Scotland 
 with an escort to take the Princess Hermondine back 
 to the kingdom of the victorious monarch. Floree is 
 half-consoled for a departure which, in effect, leaves 
 Sir Camel rejected. But here she reckons without her 
 host. Camel made furious by his disappointment, besieges 
 the castle of Mcntgries, and takes the father of Floree 
 prisoner. " I will give him back to you," he says to 
 the despairing young girl, "when you bring me back 
 from Scotland Hermondine for my bride." 
 
 Floree sets out, and at the Court of Stirling finds her 
 cousin besieged by suitors, and most unhappy. In vain 
 she entreats her father to leave her a little longer to 
 the enjoyment of the pleasures of childhood. Driven to 
 extremity by his importunity, and counselled by Floree, 
 who is sharp as a needle, the Princess utters a vow that 
 she will marry none but the bravest and most valiant 
 
 knight : 
 
 " Li plus preux et li plus vaillans 
 Et li plus plains de chevalerie." 
 
 During five years, the suitors for her hand are to lead 
 the life of knights errant ; at the end of that time, a 
 tournament at the Court of King Arthur will give the 
 Princess to the bravest among them. These hard con- 
 ditions are accepted with a facility that excites some 
 wonder, even in a romance of chivalry. The old King 
 bemoans himself, it is true ; but what can he oppose to 
 a vow ? And he is at any rate set free from the crowd of 
 suitors, importunate as those of Penelope. Camel for his 
 part, is radiant ; is not all this mere artifice on the part
 
 ME LI A DOR. 73 
 
 of his beloved, who knows well that he is the most 
 valiant of all ? To the north, to the south, to the east, 
 to the west, the heralds set out from Stirling, proclaiming 
 to all the world of chivalry the Quest of the Princess 
 Hermondine. 
 
 All this idyll is merely the prologue to one of the 
 most crowded, the most prolix, the most unreal of the 
 romances of chivalry. All through the immensity of 
 the pages that follow, there is a clash and a resonance 
 of the blazoned shields, the fine sonorous names of the 
 knights of Hermondine. They come from every clime, 
 from Carthage, from Italy, from Norway, and Savoy, 
 and Normandy, and Cornwall ; they traverse all the 
 Celtic regions of Great Britain, fighting always for the 
 love of the distant Hermondine. There is Fermagus 
 of the white targe, and Gbbard with six besants azure on 
 a field or ; there are Agaians, Aganor, and Aghamanor ; 
 there are Gondres and the amiable Gratien ; Begos the 
 Great, and Clarins, Dagorices, Hermonises, Feugis, and 
 Tarardon, Aratales, and Dromedon 
 
 " Lucanor et Solidamas, 
 Albanor, Los el Almanas, 1 ' 
 
 and Fcughin, and Savare, and Pe\sagus, and Saigremor. 
 The clashing of their swords, the shock of their lances 
 are no less heroic than their names ; on every page we 
 find fields of tournament strewn with dead, damosels 
 delivered from peril, tyrants overthrown, and victims 
 avenged ! It is a romance to turn the head of Don 
 Quixote himself.
 
 74 I'ROJSSART. 
 
 Among all these heroes, the youngest, the handsomest, 
 and. above all, the bravest, is Meliador, clothed in azure 
 armour with a golden sun. He is the son and heir of 
 Duke Patrick of Cornwall ; but, as befits a knight-errant, 
 he conceals his name, his rank, and his position, whilst 
 he rides day and night through the Druidical forests 
 of Cornwall and Wales, the desolate shores of the Isle 
 of Man, the marshes of the Border, the mountains of 
 Scotland, and that savage kingdom of Ireland, separated 
 by a mere narrow river from the coast of Bangor, accord- 
 ing to the fantastic geography of the poet. He falls like 
 a thunderbolt upon his rivals in the Quest, and when 
 he is not handling his lance he sings " fair amorous 
 psalms "- 
 
 " De belles amoureuses psaumes," 
 
 to the glory of his lady, being well versed in the mysteries 
 of rondeau and of virelai. 
 
 Nevertheless, this fair one that he adores 
 
 " Oncques il ne la vit." 
 
 Here we have the veritable chivalric love, the love 
 of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli, the love of Rambaud 
 of Orange for the Countess of Urgel, of King Peter of 
 Aragon for the fair Alazais of Boissazon. All his com- 
 panions of the Quest are in the same case. They risk 
 their life and their fame eve'ry day for a little girl, thirteen 
 years of age, who, away in Scotland, hardly gives them 
 a thought, and whose character, whose mind, whose 
 features even, are unknown to them.
 
 M ELI AD OR. 75 
 
 But their hearts form her image 
 
 " Mais leurs coeurs du tout 1'imagine." 
 
 This phantom love, which draws its breath in the air of 
 the period, this unreal, idealising, absolutely disinterested 
 and almost objectless emotion, is more than love ; it 
 is that sentiment which in the heart of the mere human 
 lover most nearly approaches religious ecstasy. And, in 
 fact, the only one of Hermondine's lovers who does 
 riot content himself with this intangible adoration, is 
 precisely Camel de Camois, the sorry knight, capable 
 of persecuting a damosel. He, the miscreant, has seen the 
 Princess of Scotland at her cousin's house, and knows 
 her; and when Meliador challenges him for the love of 
 Hermondine, the rude knight replies with a taunt : " You 
 are wrong, boy ! " 
 
 " Je vous diroi raison pourquoi : 
 Pour ce que la belle Hermondine 
 Ay ayme tous jours d'amour fine 
 Et vous 1'ames par ou'i dire. 
 On en doit bien truffer et rire ! " 
 
 The sword of the Azure Knight silences for ever this 
 impious lover, and MeMiador is hailed with acclamations as 
 he "by whom Outrecuidance (presumption) has been done 
 to death." 
 
 Camel dead, and Floree delivered, Meliador resumes his 
 life of adventure. He flies to the succour of a damsel 
 threatened by a bear on the border of a fountain. He 
 conquers in single combat three brothers who are carrying 
 on an unjust war against the chatelaine of Chepstow. He
 
 7 6 FRO 2 SS ART. 
 
 suffers shipwreck on the coast of the Isle of Man 
 
 which is 
 
 " Otant 
 
 A dire et expondre en rommant 
 L'Isle de 1'Homme." 
 
 And in this place, so wild that Meliador imagines it 
 to be peopled by the ancient Hebrews, he all at once 
 hears and with what joy ! the soft Breton speech. 
 He arranges with some fishermen to take him back 
 into Cornwall for the tournament of Tarbonne ; but 
 they land him at Aberdeen in Scotland, and the Azure 
 Knight finds himself separated by a few leagues only 
 from his beloved and invisible lady. What lover of 
 chivalry could resist ? He resolves to see her. Like 
 the lord of Coucy, he put on the dress of a pedlar, and 
 thus disguised, penetrates into the castle of his fair one. 
 But when he sees his lady, Meliador is ashamed of his 
 pack ; nothing that it contains is fine enough to offer to 
 this wonder of the world. He draws from his finger a 
 ring that Florae has given him, and on which she had 
 had these words engraved : " He am I who bears the 
 golden sun, and by whom Outrecuidance is dead." 
 
 " Cils sui qui le soleil d'or porte, 
 Par qui Outrecuidance est morte . . ." 
 
 When, some weeks later, Floree visits the castle, her 
 astonishment on seeing the ring of Meliador on Her- 
 mondine's finger may be imagined. The tv/o princesses 
 begin to suspect who this fine pedlar of jewelry was, and 
 in the hope of seeing, or of seeing again, the conqueror 
 of Camel de Camois, Hermondine persuades her father to
 
 MELIADOR. 77 
 
 announce a great tournament at the Court of Stirling. 
 The scene is charmingly graceful and simple 
 
 "... Elle va agenoiller 
 Devant li, car li rois seoit ; 
 Li rois Pembrasse, qui le voit, 
 Par le brach, et li dist : ' Ma fille ! ' 
 Et elle, qui fust tres gentille, 
 Sans lever, se tint toute ferine . . . 
 Disant : ' Monseigneur, voellies moy 
 Acorder que j'aie un tournoy. 
 Ossi bien en puis un avoir 
 Que la fille de Cornuaille, 
 Et ma cousine ossi, sans faille, 
 La demoiselle de la Garde, 
 Tout ensi ychi on me garde 
 C'on fait un oiselet en mue. 
 Ne on ne s'esbat ne se jue (joue) 
 Devant moy. Je n'ay point de joie ! 
 Ne pensez vous pas qu'il m'anoie, 
 Chi, toute seule, entre mes gens ? 
 Certes, oil ! car je me sens 
 Plus pesans et plus rudes assez. 
 II y a ja trois ans passes 
 Que je n'ay veu chevaliers." 
 
 Have we not here the eternal spirit of childhood ? And 
 is it not thus that in every age young girls of fifteen have 
 talked when they wish to persuade an indulgent old 
 father to give them some pleasure . . . 
 
 But whilst Mliador is wandering in Scotland, the great 
 tournament takes place at the Court of Cornwall. At 
 Tarbonne much anxiety is felt at the prolonged absence of 
 Prince Meliador ; and it is in the hope of bringing him 
 back among the crowd of knights errant, that Duke
 
 7 8 FROISSART. 
 
 Patrick proclaims the tournament in honour of his 
 daughter Phenonee. In the absence of Meliador, 
 Froissart arranges that the prize shall be given to his second 
 young hero, Aghamanor, the Red Knight. When the 
 Duke's daughter witnesses the exploits of Aghamanor, 
 she feels her heart stir within her. A strange disquietude 
 seizes her ; she blushes, she trembles, she feels she knows 
 not how ; and to herself she says : "If the mere sight of 
 the Red Knight troubles me thus, it is that I love him ; 
 and if I love him he must be my brother Meliador." 
 This logic reassures her ; she has no need to see his features, 
 to hear his voice, to know his name ; she loves him it is 
 Meliador ! Froissart does not leave her long to pine in doubt. 
 Disguised as a painter workman, Aghamanor penetrates 
 into the manor of Phenonee, and brings her a picture 
 representing the tournament of Tarbonne. The princess's 
 heart gives her no warning that this skilful artisan is he 
 for whom she languishes ; she receives him with an 
 amiable indifference, and sends him to dine with the 
 servants. Meliador, although son of a king, had enter- 
 tained himself greatly at Stirling, when put to a similar 
 trial, and had won the goodwill of all the lower table. But 
 Aghamanor more susceptible, more of an artist than the 
 British hero is less good-humoured ; he feels humiliated 
 at being thus misunderstood 
 
 " Comment ? a une camberiere 
 Je seroie recommandes ? 
 Je cuidois bien estre telz 
 Que Phenonee . . . par la main 
 M'ewist menes pour nous esbatre."
 
 ME LI AD OR. 79 
 
 When the waiting-woman brings him forty marks for his 
 work, it is worse still. The irascible knight rises abruptly 
 and rushes from the manor, leaving the poor girl con- 
 founded, with the money in her hand. 
 
 But love is stronger than pride. A few days later he 
 returns to the manor with a portrait of the Red Knight 
 kneeling before his lady. PheYionee is astonished at the 
 resemblance between Aghamanor and the painter, and 
 little by little, with no great reluctance, Aghamanor 
 confesses, yes, it is indeed he who is the Red Knight. 
 When the young girl, however, full of joy, demands his 
 name, Aghamanor remembers himself: 
 
 " Je n'ose me nommer, ma dame, 
 Car je suis chevaliers de queste !" 
 
 A Knight of Quest, it must be understood, in a romance 
 of the Round Table, somewhat resembled a competitor of 
 to-day for the prize of eloquence in the (French) Academy 
 Until the prize was awarded, it was forbidden him to 
 unmask for fear of disturbing the impartiality of the 
 judges ; each one must remain concealed by the anony- 
 mity of the coat-of-arms he bore. Honour, therefore, 
 forbade Aghamanor to reveal his name or his rank even, 
 to her whom he loved. The fair Phenonee, dying of 
 love for her knight, compares herself to Narcissus, 
 enamoured of a shadow 
 
 " Ou a Hero qui en la mer 
 Mourut pour 1'enfant Leander." 
 
 She feels that love gives her rights over the object of
 
 8o F&OISSAJIT. 
 
 her adoration ; she rebels at the silence of Aghamanor. 
 How believe in a love that refuses even to share a secret ? 
 In taking leave of her lover she recovers a fragment of 
 pride. 
 
 " I promise you nothing," she says. " They tell me that 
 the Azure Knight will be first at the tournament ; I give 
 my hand to him who shall be second." But she adds : 
 " Should it be you, Messire, I will not complain." 
 
 Whilst Aghamanor and Phenonee fall in love with 
 each other, the Knight Saigremor rides by moor and by 
 forest, lance in hand, his targe about his neck. One 
 day, on entering a beechwood, weary with his long ride, 
 he hangs his arms on a tree, throws off his helmet, 
 leaves his horse to graze, and lies down in the shade on 
 the thick grass. But let the knight who yields himself 
 to sloth, beware ! A white stag suddenly springs from the 
 bush, and frightens Saigremor's horse, which starts away 
 at a gallop. Saigremor runs after the horse, and the stag 
 after the knight, until at last, after long hours, Saigremor 
 finds himself lost in a distant thicket, without horse and 
 without arms, without sword or lance, with nothing but this 
 diabolical, this enchanted stag, which keeps close at his 
 heels, and looks at him with big strange eyes that seem 
 to say : " Mount me ! " . . . . Saigremor mounts, and the 
 stag goes like the wind through the thickets of the forest, 
 swims across the chill water of the lakes, until at length 
 .... [here there is a gap in the manuscript] Saigremor 
 finds himself stretched upon the grass in a beautiful 
 garden, close where three fair ladies are walking, holding 
 each other by the fingers.
 
 MELIADOR. 8 1 
 
 They wear white robes, long and ample 
 " A repris et a longues manches." 
 
 They are lady-fairies 
 
 " Garnies de reverences : 
 Nymphes et pucelles 
 De Diane, et ses demoiselles." 
 
 Froissart contemplates them complacently for a moment, 
 then tells us : "I will relate to you what happened to 
 Saigremor in their company, so soon as I shall have ended 
 the history of the Quest." But alas ! the concluding pages 
 of Mttiador are lost : and for five hundred years has the 
 Knight Saigremor remained suspended in the enchanted 
 air of fairyland, far from the Court of King Arthur, and 
 from Sebille, his lady-love. 
 
 Meanwhile, the five years of the Quest are ended, and 
 a great tournament, to be held at the Court of Carlyon, 
 will decide the fate of the prize. Froissart makes use of 
 the occasion to show us all the mechanism of a tourna- 
 ment, the great event of the world of fashion of that 
 epoch. We see the experts choosing a fitting site, a 
 round and quite smooth meadow, neither too near 
 the town nor too far removed from it. We hear 
 the orders given for the necessary works ; obstacles to be 
 removed, the ground to be levelled, the ladies' tribunes 
 to be constructed 
 
 " En manieres d'un escafaut, 
 . . . proprement carpentes, 
 Longs et larges comme un hosteV' (hotel). 
 
 When the day of the festival arrives, these tribunes 
 
 G
 
 82 FROISSART. 
 
 will be adorned with a crowd of fair ladies, dressed 
 in the latest fashion and in their finest attire. See 
 how they bend over the barrier to follow with their 
 eyes the colours of him on whose success their heart 
 is set ! See the variegated scarfs flash with rainbow 
 hues as they pass against the deep green of the course ! 
 Listen to the clamours of the crowd, yelling out the 
 name of the victor! It was a scene that, in more 
 respects than one, might be compared with the race- 
 course of Longchamp on the day of the Grand Prix ; 
 or rather since here there are wounded and dead 
 " quickly buried " to a bull-fight in the arena of Nimes, 
 or of Aries, or of Madrid. 
 
 It will surprise no one to learn that the Azure Knight 
 carries off the prize of the tournament, with the hand 
 of the Scottish King's daughter, whilst Aghamanor, 
 the second in valour, weds Phenonee. Each one of 
 the knights, indeed, finds awaiting him in the tribunes 
 a charming bride. And thus to wedding chimes and 
 in a cloud of bridal veils, closes this immense romance, 
 truly worthy of the Middle Ages, "enormous and 
 delicate."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 STORIES OF BEARN. 
 
 SUCH was the romance read out by Froissart night 
 after night in presence of the court of Gaston Phoebus. 
 From time to time the Count would interrupt the 
 reading to discuss some question arising from its 
 subject ; at other times a thrill of more intense interest 
 would pass round the great hall of Orthez. For there 
 were pages in Meliador which must have appealed 
 strangely to a Bearnais audience ; moments when the 
 romance must have appeared almost a roinan a clef. 
 The hero himself, that invincible prince with a golden 
 sun on his shield, does he not resemble him who had 
 taken the sun for his blazon and the name of the 
 sun for his name ? And the story of the combat between 
 Savare and Feughin near relations who love each other 
 tenderly, yet one of whom wounds the other with a death- 
 stroke might it not recall to those who listened the 
 melancholy history of the Count's son ? And Camel de 
 Camois, so brave throughout the day, but haunted every 
 night by a phantom that he combats until dawn, is it not 
 a veritable copy of Messire Pierre de Foix, the Count's 
 natural brother ?
 
 84 FROISSART. 
 
 For this is what the poet says : 
 
 " Si osoit il bien chevauchier, 
 La nuit par forests et par landes, 
 Et entrer en pas perilleus, 
 Mais point il n'osoit dormir seuls." 
 
 One can imagine the murmurs that ran round the hall. Is 
 not this Messire Pierre to the life ? And the next day the 
 canon of Chimay would be told the story with which every 
 inhabitant of Orthez was familiar. 
 
 This poor Messire Pierre had been " sick through a 
 fantasy," ever since he killed in the forests of Biscay a 
 strange, an enormous bear a beast as mysterious as the 
 stag of Saigremor in the romance. Each night since 
 this adventure, the knight rising, would fight with a 
 shadow, drawing his sword and cleaving the air with his 
 blows, until the knights sleeping with him in his chamber 
 would be forced to awaken him, in order to take away 
 his arms. Then he would throw himself on his bed 
 and weep. The worst was, that everyone feared the poor 
 wretch in his affliction ; his wife even, and his children had 
 abandoned him, seized with a mysterious dread, as the 
 Countess of Foix had abandoned her husband. 
 
 " Then," says Froissart, " I who mused on the great 
 marvel, said : ' Sir, I believe it well that it is as ye have 
 said. Sir, we find in the old writing that anciently the 
 gods and goddesses at their pleasure would change and 
 transform men into beasts and into fowls. And it might 
 be so, that this bear was before some knight chasing in the 
 forest of Biscay, and, peradventure, displeased in that time
 
 STORIES OF BEARN. 85 
 
 god or goddess, whereby he was transformed into a bear, 
 as anciently Actaeon was changed into an hart.'" 
 
 Yes, Sir John Froissart, the story is undoubtedly a 
 strange one ; but what seems stranger still, perhaps, to us, 
 is to find you, canon of Chimay though you be, believing 
 in the power of " these gods and goddesses of old writing " ; 
 and that the first historian of the fourteenth century, 
 should enshrine a fairy tale, like a precious gem, between 
 the admirable account of the war in Portugal and the 
 French expedition against England. But, strange as it may 
 be in the historian, your readers at least, good Froissart, 
 have no reason to complain. . . . 
 
 Messire Pierre was not the only one of his family to 
 feel the influence of the invisible world. Froissart's pro- 
 found admiration for Gaston Phcebus is mingled with a 
 vague disquietude ; this great lord was too much above 
 other men. " No man," Froissart tells us, " knew exactly 
 what was in the mind of the Count of Foix." He was 
 wise and subtle beyond the subtlety of princes. But how 
 explain that he knew of things that were happening in 
 Germany, in Turkey, in England, long before news of 
 them could reach him, at the very hour indeed in which 
 they were taking place ? Sometimes, when those about 
 him were agitating themselves over some trifle, he had a 
 fashion of looking at them and speaking to them " coldly 
 and vaguely," as though to show he was not of their race. 
 Could this Prince, " right perfect in all things, sage 
 and perceiving," could he be a necromancer and wizard, 
 even such as the sinister Giovanni Galeasso, Duke of 
 Milan?
 
 86 FROISSART. 
 
 Froissart listens, with an increasing anxiety, to the 
 stories current concerning the omniscience of his host of 
 Orthez. A squire one day relates to him that a battalion 
 of Bearnais knights, having been taken prisoner in an 
 ambush in Portugal, the Count of Foix grew sad of cheer, 
 fell sick with grief, and told all who would listen to him 
 that the country of Beam had never before had such loss 
 in a single day. " Then is he a diviner," cries Froissart, 
 " or else he hath a messenger that flieth through the night 
 on the wind." 
 
 The squire began to laugh, and to assure the amazed 
 canon that this sort of thing was by no means rare in 
 Beam. He himself knew a lord with one of these 
 familiar demons, who flew indeed on the winds all through 
 the night, collecting news for his master in all the kingdoms 
 of the earth. 
 
 "'And do you believe,' quoth I, 'that the Count of 
 Foix is served with such a messenger ? ' 
 
 " ' Surely,' quoth the squire, ' it is the imagination of many 
 that he hath such a messenger. And the spirit speaketh 
 as good Gascon as I.' " 
 
 Then Froissart takes out his tablets and writes down the 
 wondrous tale at length ; nor ever remembers, good canon 
 of Chimay, that in Orthez everyone knows how " to speak 
 Gascon." 
 
 In this small world, haunted by a mystery, Froissart 
 during ten weeks carried from one to another his curiosity 
 and his questionings as chronicler. " I longed sore to ask 
 and to know how Gaston, the Count's son, had died."
 
 STORJES OF BEARN. 87 
 
 At last, although Messire Espaing de Lyon still refused 
 to speak of it, Sir John found "an ancient squire and 
 a notable," who consented to relate to him the lugubrious 
 history. 
 
 Gaston, son of the Count of Foix, was a boy of 
 sixteen, light, naif, easily taken in. On the occasion of a 
 visit he paid his mother, who, in fear of her formidable 
 husband, had taken refuge with her brother, the King 
 of Navarre, this latter gave his nephew a small purse filled 
 with powder; it was a magic powder, he assured him, 
 which, should the boy succeed in getting his father to taste 
 it, would do away in a moment with all the differences 
 existing between the Count and Countess. Only, in order 
 that the charm might work, it must be performed with 
 the greatest secrecy. 
 
 This explanation satisfied poor Gaston. Some few days 
 after his return to Orthez, he quarrels with his brother 
 Yvain over a game of tennis. Yvain takes refuge with 
 his indulgent father. " Why should he beat me ? " and 
 in the midst of his weeping : " He were more worthy 
 to be beaten than I, with his purse full of powder that 
 he beareth day and night." The Count of Foix remains 
 pensive ; he was a man " moult unaginatif" as we know, 
 haughty too, sceptical, prompt to -suspect evil, prompt to 
 punish it, and haunted by that obsession of all tyrants : 
 the fear of poison. He watches his son, and some few 
 evenings later, at dinner in the great hall, he sees the lad 
 surreptitiously sprinkle with powder the plate destined for 
 the chief of the family. He raises his head, looks his son 
 in the eyes, and throws the morsel from his plate to the
 
 88 FROISSART. 
 
 dog crouching at his feet ; the dog swells and dies. " Ah, 
 Gaston, fals traditor" cries the father, "for thee, and to 
 increase thine heritage that should come to thee, I have 
 had war and hatred of the French King, of the King of 
 England, of the King of Spain, of the King of Navarre, 
 and of the King of Aragon. And now thou wouldst 
 murder me." Had it not been for the intervention of 
 the knights in the hall, the Count of Foix would have slain 
 his son on the spot, with his own hand. The young man 
 was led away to the dark and humid dungeon that lies 
 under the great tower of Orthez, and Gaston Phcebus 
 relieved his anger by putting to death, with prolonged and 
 refined tortures, fifteen of the handsomest and youngest 
 squires of Beam, friends and companions of the Prince. 
 
 In this way, ten days were got through. The States 
 of Foix, meanwhile, demanded the restoration to liberty 
 of the heir to the country, and the father's heart began 
 to soften. Who could say? If Gaston were sent to travel 
 in France and Spain, removed from bad influences, "he 
 might somewhat forget his evil will, and be of more 
 knowledge." During all this time, the little Prince, so 
 gracious and so delicate, was lying in his dungeon with 
 no change of clothes or possibility of seeing the light. 
 On the tenth day his servitor, entering the vault with 
 a torch in his hand, perceived the young man pale with 
 the pallor of death, and noticed carefully ranged by the 
 wall, all the meals that had been brought to him in his 
 prison. Perhaps Gaston dreaded for himself some such 
 powder as he had brought from Navarre ; perhaps he had 
 heard of the cruel death of his dearest friends ; or perhaps
 
 STORIES OF BEARN. 89 
 
 he refused to survive the suspicions, at once so unjust and 
 so terribly justified, of the father he had so nearly poisoned. 
 The servitor lost no time in conjectures ; he went straight 
 to the Count of Foix, and said to him : " Sir, for God's 
 sake have mercy on your son Gaston, for he is near 
 famished in prison." 
 
 The Count of Foix was at his toilette. Without speak- 
 ing a word he rose and went towards the tower where 
 his son was confined, continuing meanwhile to pare his 
 nails mechanically with a small, long-shaped knife he 
 held between his fingers. He opened the door of the 
 dungeon, and saw his son lying there, feeble with fasting. 
 " Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat ? " he said ; and with 
 the words struck at his son with the right hand that 
 which still held the little knife and went out as abruptly 
 as he had entered. 
 
 An instant later, the servitor returned, his face white as 
 linen. 
 
 " ' Sir, Gaston, your son, is dead.' 
 
 " ' Dead ! ' quoth the Count. 
 
 " ' Yes, truly, sir,' quoth he." 
 
 The little knife, forgotten in the father's hand, had 
 severed one of the arteries of the throat, and the boy, 
 weakened by a too prolonged fast, had been unable to 
 bear the loss of blood. The Count shaved his head, 
 clothed himself and all his house in black, and gave his 
 son a magnificent funeral. And, perhaps, in reflecting 
 that all the fruits of his reign would go to a cousin whom 
 he detested, he wept ; if not for his son, at least for his 
 lost heir. 
 
 H
 
 90 FRO1SSART. 
 
 Thus the Count of Foix, " so perfect in all things," 
 was the murderer of his child. This in no way diminishes 
 Froissart's admiration for him. Was he not one of the 
 most valiant knights of his time independent moreover, 
 of the vulgar morality of clerics and bourgeois, as though 
 he had been one of the " gods and goddesses of which 
 the old writing speaks ? " The accident to Gaston was 
 assuredly a thing much to be regretted, and one may be 
 permitted to wish that the Count had not put to death 
 " right horribly," fifteen youths belonging to the noblest 
 families of Beam. But this irate sovereign was not the 
 less a wise and subtle statesman, a warrior formidable 
 beyond all other warriors, a liberal and courteous knight, 
 and one helpful to every lady or damosel who might be 
 in need of his sword.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. 
 
 SOME years previous to Froissart's visit, a very great 
 lady had come to Orthez to entrust her child to the care 
 of the sovereign of Barn. The Countess of Boulogne had 
 made an unhappy marriage with a mean and worthless 
 man, " who wished to sell his inheritance, the better to 
 follow his pleasures." No crime in the fourteenth 
 century was held in greater discredit ; it was looked 
 upon as cheating at cards, or neglecting to pay a debt 
 of honour would be regarded in our day ; the man 
 who contemplated selling his inheritance was held to be 
 for ever disgraced. The Countess of Boulogne then, was 
 fully within her rights in removing her daughter from the 
 care of so despicable a father, and bringing her to the 
 court of the Count of Foix. Gaston Phcebus undertook the 
 care of the little girl, and looked after her interests so 
 well that he made of her one of the richest heiresses in 
 France. 
 
 In 1389 she was a child of twelve, a little Princess Her- 
 mondine, inhabiting the most cheerful, the best lighted 
 of the towers of Orthez, that which looked out upon the 
 great bridge and the market-place. The Count of Foix,
 
 92 FROJSSART. 
 
 having brought her up, wished to marry her, and to marry 
 her well; one must fulfil one's duty to the end! When 
 Froissart first saw the young girl, there was already 
 question of betrothing her to a very great personage, Duke 
 Jean of Berry, uncle to the King of France, a very rich, 
 learned and powerful prince, a great lover of pictures and 
 romances, and one of the great " collectors " of the period. 
 Froissart was already acquainted with him ; his daughter 
 had married the son of the Count of Blois. He accordingly 
 wrote a ballad for the wedding of the " Shepherd of 
 Berry " and the " Shepherdess of Boulogne." It was a 
 charming picture, with one defect only ; the shepherdess 
 was twelve years old, and the shepherd, a short, thick little 
 man (he was one of the ugliest men in France), was 
 nearly fifty " sixty," Froissart tells us ; but with the 
 canon of Chimay, one must practise the art of verifying 
 dates. 
 
 A graver obstacle than that of years threatened to 
 separate the betrothed couple. The Count of Foix 
 expected the expenses of his guardianship to be paid ; 
 " he demanded to have a good sum of florins." The 
 Duke of Berry found the total, fixed at 30,000 
 golden florins, an exorbitant figure ; but the Count of 
 Foix held firm, " although," Froissart tells us, " he did 
 not wish to appear to sell the lady." 
 
 Towards the month of May 1389, the affair was 
 arranged ; decidedly the Duke of Berry cared more for 
 his twelve-year-old bride than for his 30,000 florins. 
 The marriage took place at Orthez, and the little 
 Duchess was sent to find her husband in Auvergne.
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. 93 
 
 It was a marriage that turned out not badly. Under a 
 common exterior the Duke of Berry concealed the delicate 
 and enquiring spirit of a dilettante ; and his little wife was 
 to be the pearl of his collections. Rapacious and dis- 
 orderly in his affairs, harsh in pursuing his own advantage, 
 cruel towards his enemies, the Duke of Berry could 
 yet be generous in private life; his " Comptes," still 
 preserved in the Archives, permit us to divine in a 
 thousand details, under the somewhat grotesque mask 
 shown us by history, an amiable master, an attentive 
 husband. As for the young Duchess, she remains one 
 of the most gracious figures of the close of the fourteenth 
 century ; and it will be seen, a little later on, how her 
 prompt courage was one day to save the life of the 
 King of France. 
 
 In the month of May 1389, the canon of Chimay left 
 the court of Gaston Phcebus with the young Duchess's 
 escort ; the opportunity of returning to France with this 
 noble retinue was one too good for Froissart to neglect. 
 Nevertheless, it was with regret that he left Orthez. The 
 Count of Foix, if he had not touched the heart of the 
 great chronicler, had captivated his imagination, and 
 Froissart shows an infatuation for his host that often 
 rises to enthusiasm. On his departure the Count of 
 Foix, who had already defrayed all his expenses, made 
 him a present of eighty florins of Aragon a very 
 pretty souvenir. He also gave him back the manu- 
 script of Mttiador. Was this gift one of pure 
 generosity? Froissart, in any case, shows no suspicion 
 to the contrary.
 
 94 FROISSART. 
 
 Froissart was never to see his benefactor again. In 
 1392 he formed the project of returning to Beam; but 
 toward the end of the summer of that same year bad news 
 arrived that caused him to change his plans. The Count 
 of Foix, as we know, was supremely fond of hunting. In 
 his kennels he had no fewer than sixteen hundred dogs, 
 among which must not be forgotten the four hounds 
 that Froissart brought from the banks of the Loire. One 
 warm day in April the Count had gone to hunt the bear 
 on the road to Pampeluna. Towards sunset he alighted 
 with the lords of his suite to dine at a little village inn, 
 situated at two leagues from Orthez. All had been 
 arranged in the best way possible to do honour to the 
 sovereign. " He went into his chamber the which was 
 strewn with green herbs, and the walls set full of green 
 boughs to make the chamber more fresh, for the air 
 without was marvellously hot as in the month of May . . . 
 and so sat down in a chair, and talked and devised with 
 Messire Espaing de Lyon." They talked of the chase 
 and of the dogs, and of which had run the best, and of the 
 bear that had been killed, awaiting only the arrival of 
 Messire Yvain to go to dinner. At last the young man 
 appeared ; the squires hastened to set the table, and the 
 Count demanded water to wash his hands. It was brought 
 to him as usual in a tall silver jar ; the Count held out 
 his hands over a basin, and the fresh water was poured 
 out. " As soon as the cold water fell on his fingers, which 
 were fine, long, and straight, he waxed pale in the face, 
 his heart and his feet failed him, and so fell down, 
 and in the falling said, ' Ah, I am but dead. God have
 
 h of Count (otitnii h<? jTnxx.
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. 95 
 
 mercy on me ! " It was the last prayer of Gaston Phoebus, 
 Count of Foix. 
 
 The knights, confounded, tried every remedy that 
 despair could suggest to them ; nothing availed, the 
 Count was dead. Whilst Messire Yvain "was weeping 
 and lamenting and wringing his hands," the knights 
 took him on one side and said : " Sir Yvain, ye have 
 now lost your father ; we know that he loved you entirely ; 
 leave your sorrow, and leap on your horse and ride to 
 Orthez. Take you possession of the castle and the 
 garrison, and of your father's treasure that is within it, 
 or ever the death of your father be known abroad." The 
 young man did as they advised, and during some weeks 
 succeeded, in fact, in holding the castle, with the com- 
 plicity, more or less declared, of the town that had 
 given him birth. During all this time, the Count 
 of Foix lay in his leaden coffin, placed above ground 
 in front of the high altar of Orthez, receiving honour 
 and respect from all. And his children and his people 
 wept his loss, lamenting and recalling his noble life, 
 his valour, his prudence, his prosperity, and his great 
 wisdom in governing. " While this gentle lord lived, 
 there was neither French nor English that durst displease 
 us. Now our neighbours will make us war. Ah, thou 
 land of Barn, destitute and without comfort of any noble 
 heritor, what will become of thee? Thou shall never 
 have again such another as was this noble and gentle 
 Count of Foix." 
 
 The Viscount of Chastellux, however, was by no means 
 resigned to seeing so fine an inheritance slip through
 
 96 FROISSART. 
 
 his fingers. He was French ; and the council of the King 
 of France notwithstanding some inclination to juggle 
 over the little principality, in default of direct heirs, to 
 the profit of the crown insisted that the law should be 
 respected, and invested the Viscount in his inheritance 
 with homage to the King of France. As for Messire 
 Yvain, turned out of possession, 2,000 florins were 
 granted him out of his father's estate, and the young 
 man left the country for ever. 
 
 Nineteen months later, Messire Yvain was endeavouring 
 to introduce into the Court of France where, as life and 
 soul of all the entertainments, he was greatly liked the 
 taste for those " Granges entremets " which had caused 
 so much diversion at the court of Gaston Phoebus. It 
 was on the occasion of the marriage of the Dame de 
 Hainseville, the 28th January, 1393. Messire Yvain and 
 five young knights, of whom the King was one, dis- 
 guised themselves as satyrs or savages, covered with 
 long flaxen tow, the colour of hair, from head to foot. 
 They entered the hall, dancing grotesquely, the five 
 knights fastened together, the King a few steps in front, 
 leading the dance. " They were so disguised that no 
 man nor woman knew them." With a thoughtlessness 
 he must have eternally regretted, the young Duke of 
 Orleans, desirous of seeing them more closely, seized a 
 torch and approached the dancers. Immediately the 
 flax caught fire, blazed up, and heated the pitch that 
 fastened the tow to the linen garment beneath. The 
 dance changed into grotesque and horrible contortions, 
 accompanied by cries of anguish ; the six satyrs were
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. 97 
 
 being burnt alive. One of them, remembering that the 
 buttery was close to the grand reception hall, threw 
 himself into a vessel of water standing there, and so 
 escaped death. How the life of the King of France 
 was saved by that young Duchess of Berry brought up by 
 Gaston Phcebus is well known ; she covered him entirely 
 with the great court mantle she was wearing. It was 
 not ill-done for a young girl of sixteen, and on that day 
 she did honour to her guardian and the education he 
 had given her. She could not, alas ! do as much for the 
 comrade of her childhood, Messire Yvain de Foix ; he 
 died of his burns, "in great misery and pain." The Count 
 de Joigny and Aimery de Poitiers expired also in great 
 agony. Henri de Guizac was already dead, " burned to 
 death on the spot." 
 
 " Ah, Count Gaston de Foix," cries Froissart, " if this 
 had fortuned in thy life-days, thou shouldst have had 
 great displeasure, and it had been hard to have peased 
 thee, for thou lovedst him entirely." Perhaps the justice 
 of God demanded that the martyrdom of the one much- 
 loved son should expiate the murder of the other.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FROISSART AT AVIGNON. 
 
 ON her way to Riom, where she was to meet her husband, 
 the Duchess of Berry, with her suite, passed by Avignon. 
 It was in the city of the Pope, towards the end of May, 
 that Froissart bought, for the sum of a hundred livres, the 
 " expectation " of the canonry of Lille. " With money one 
 obtains benefices," he tells us in the Dit du Florin ; but for 
 his hundred livres he received nothing but the shadow and 
 the title. For many years yet Froissart was to sign him- 
 self Canon of Chimay and " Canon of Lille en herbe" 
 
 At Avignon Froissart experienced a mishap, to which we 
 owe one of the most engaging poems of the fourteenth 
 century. In returning from the money-changer's, he placed 
 in some untrustworthy purse all the good golden francs for 
 which he had exchanged his Aragon florins. The little 
 purse had never contained so much gold before a poor 
 little country curb's purse, much more accustomed to hold 
 heavy copper pennies ; it allowed the treasure confided to 
 its care to escape. Froissart lost his money; and we are 
 the gainers by the charming ditty with which he thanked 
 the great lords who came to his help in this misadventure. 
 
 The Dit du Florin gives us some piquant information
 
 FR OISSART AT A VIGNON. 99 
 
 concerning Froissart's character where it touched the 
 practical side of life. He shows himself heedless and 
 extravagant, like the great child that he was. " There is 
 nobody," he cries, " from Douay to Valenciennes, who 
 knows how to get rid of his money so well as I do. One 
 might almost think that money has taken a dislike to me, 
 for no sooner do I get any than it runs out of my hands. 
 An excellent courier, indeed, my money would make, only 
 it never comes back to me ! People wonder to see me 
 always with empty pockets ; but what would you have ? 
 I manage to spend a livre quicker than another person 
 spends a sou. And yet I heap up no corn in my barns, I 
 build no churches, I command for my use neither clocks, 
 nor ships, nor galleys, nor manors ! Nor do I spend my 
 revenues in furnishing fine rooms, nor in building princely 
 galleries. I buy neither silk, nor flax, nor village bakeries, 
 nor mills. And yet my money disappears of itself, flies, 
 takes itself off afar ! And if I bewail its absence, I am of 
 opinion it cares not at all." 
 
 " Depuis vingt-cinq ans sans la cure 
 De Lestinnes, qui est grant'ville, 
 En ai je bien eu deux mille 
 De francs : que sont-ils devenus ? " 
 
 At this moment the poet hears the sound of a slender 
 silvery voice. It is the single florin left in his purse that 
 addresses him a poor little florin all worn and broken, 
 which for many months has lain at the bottom of his purse 
 and which remains faithful to him still. 
 
 " Do not abandon yourself too much to despair," says 
 the florin, " for you have had many things for your money
 
 ioo FROISSART. 
 
 Your Chronicles alone have cost you, at least, 7000 
 livres, and that money, at any rate you have spent 
 
 worthily." 
 
 " Car faite en avez mainte histoire 
 Dont il sera encor memoire 
 De vous dans les temps a venir : 
 Et ferez les gens souvenir 
 De vos sens et de vos doctrines." 
 
 And then continues the florin maliciously 
 
 " Les taverniers de Lestinnes 
 En ont bien eu cinq cent francs ! " 
 
 " Do not forget, either, your travelling expenses. Have 
 you not visited Scotland, England, Wales ? Have you not 
 
 been to Rome 
 
 ' En arroi de souffisant homme 
 Avec haquenee et roncin ? ' 
 
 " As to the country of France, you have traversed it in 
 every direction, always at great expense, always well 
 mounted, in grand style, with fine mantles and good food. 
 Impossible to have lived better ! I have seen you so 
 joyous, so jolly, so amorous, that, by Saint Giles ! I am of 
 opinion that for your 2000 francs you have had the value 
 of twice as much." 
 
 Then, consoled for his loss, the poet sets to work to 
 spend just as much money as before.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE RETURN FROM BEARN. 
 
 FROISSART accompanied the Duchess as far as Riom, was 
 present at the fetes given in her honour, and from thence 
 made his way by Paris and Valenciennes to rejoin his 
 master and lord in Holland. In Paris he met the French 
 son-in-law of King Edward III., Enguerrand de Coucy, 
 whom he had often seen in England. Sir Enguerrand 
 invited our canon to pass a few days with him at 
 Crevecceur. Froissart talked to him of Beam, of 
 Avignon, of that astonishing marriage of the Duke of 
 Berry, concerning which Charles VI. and his brother 
 had jests to make not a few. The lord of Coucy spoke 
 to him in return of England, of his nephew, the young 
 King Richard II., of the conference at Boulogne between 
 the French and English delegates, and of the truce which 
 was said to be imminent. It was then that Sir John 
 Froissart felt rising in his heart for the land of his 
 youth, a nostalgia that was destined to grow ever stronger 
 and stronger. He could not however think, even, of 
 travelling in England whilst that country was at war with 
 France. What would Guy de Blois say if he were to
 
 102 FRO I SS ART. 
 
 see his chaplain in the enemy's camp ? It was necessary 
 to wait for peace to be concluded. 
 
 After three days at Crevecoeur, and a fortnight at 
 Valenciennes, Froissart decided to rejoin his patron at 
 Schoonhoven ; but there cruel disappointments were 
 awaiting him. The noble Guy de Blois, the fearless 
 crusader, was become little better than a carpet knight. 
 Indolence, self-indulgence, and senseless expenditure had 
 taken possession of him and of his court. " This Count of 
 Blois, and Marie de Namur, his wife, by great drinking 
 and much eating of sweet and delicate meats, were over- 
 grown with fatness." " Messire Guy is of those," Eustace 
 Deschamps tells us in one of his poems, " who have neither 
 pity nor mercy upon meat, and are for ever storming the 
 wine-flagon." The Count could no longer mount his horse, 
 he was carried to the hunt in a litter ; and Froissart 
 seeing him thus grotesquely borne about by his servants, 
 doubtless recalled that passage in the treatise on hunting 
 by the Count of Foix, in which it is demonstrated that 
 hunters are necessarily virtuous, since they eat little and 
 work much : "And never have I seen so God keep me 
 a man of breeding, who would not work because he was 
 rich; for that comes from a base heart." Guy de Blois 
 could neither work any more nor go to the wars ; he was 
 grown too obese, having led too luxurious a life. In this 
 state of inaction, a state not natural to him, his shallow 
 and excitable temper broke out in abrupt storms of 
 passion. Nor does Froissart tell us everything; for we 
 learn from a document published by the Baron Kervyn de 
 Lettenhove, that, in a fit of fury, the Count killed with
 
 THE RETURN FROM BEARN. 103 
 
 his own hand one of the chiefs of the Brabantine 
 army. 
 
 This degenerate prince, formerly so brilliant and 
 valorous, indolent now, and weary of endless days 
 no longer diversified by the noble pastimes of war 
 and tournament, gave way to a prodigality that was 
 positively insane. His purse, filled with the accumulated 
 wealth of all the Chatillon, was a veritable cask of the 
 Danaides, whence money for ever flowed, and flowed to 
 mere waste. At his side sat Marie de Namur, the clumsy 
 Walloon, her heart restless and dissatisfied in her huge 
 person. In the stagnant life of the little sleepy court, 
 she gained great ascendancy over the mind of her 
 husband. Froissart had no great liking for the Countess 
 of Blois, but he doubtless preferred her to the man, who } 
 with the exception of herself, alone had some influence 
 over the Count. The valet Sohier, son of a weaver of 
 Malines, an underbred and ignorant fellow who could 
 neither read nor write, had become a great power at the 
 court of Blois. Froissart did not love Marmosets. " And 
 everywhere one finds them ! " he tells us. " The Duke 
 of Berry hath his Take Thi6baut as the Count of Blois 
 hath his Sohier. I have seen no great lord but that he 
 had his Marmoset . . . except the Count of Foix, for 
 he never had none such, for he was naturally sage . . . 
 I say not that such lords as are ruled by such Marmosets 
 be fools, but rather more than fools, for they be sore 
 blinded, and yet they have two eyes." 
 
 Froissart must have quitted without regret the spectacle 
 of this sadly-changed court. Towards the end of the
 
 io 4 FROISSART. 
 
 summer he went back to Valenciennes "to refresh" 
 himself and to repose. It was there that he wrote his 
 third book, during the last months of the year 1389. But 
 the rumour of august festivities and adventurous expedi- 
 tions reached him even in his tranquil habitation ; and he 
 worked with a will so as to be able the sooner to go and 
 gather other documents through new adventures, and 
 further pursue his three intellectual joys: "To see the 
 marvels of this world, to hear and to know new things, 
 to write and to chronicle fresh histories." 
 
 He was soon to find his opportunity. In writing out 
 the various reports collected at Orthez on the wars of 
 Castille and of Portugal, Froissart became conscious 
 of their insufficiency. " I devised in mine imagination 
 how I could not be sufficiently instructed by the hearing 
 of them that sustained the opinion of the King of Castille, 
 but that in likewise I ought to hear the Portugals, as 
 well as the Gascons and Spaniards that I heard in the 
 house of the Count of Foix." Having learned that at 
 Bruges there was " a great settlement of Portugals," 
 Froissart made his way thither, in the hope of meeting 
 some knight or squire who had been through the war. 
 On arriving at Bruges, it was suggested that he should 
 continue his journey as far as Meddelbrughe in Zealand, 
 where dom Joam Fernand Pacheco, councillor of the King 
 of Portugal, was awaiting a favourable wind for his 
 caravelle. Froissart needed no persuasion ; he set off once 
 more, reached Meddelbrughe, found dom Joam, and re- 
 mained with him for a whole week. Day after day in 
 the poor apartment of the Zealand inn, the great man,
 
 THE RETURN FROM BEARN. 105 
 
 with emphatic and well-balanced phrases, related the 
 history of all the events that had taken place in Portugal 
 since the death of King Ferdinand. The chronicler, mean- 
 while, pen in hand, " took great pleasure to hear him and 
 to write his words." A strange thing to note, this same 
 Froissart, who only the other day had been setting down this 
 and that fantastic history of enchanted bears in Gascony, 
 gives now an account of the Portuguese war, which in its 
 judgment, accuracy, and precision remains the admiration 
 of everyone who interests himself in the history of the 
 Peninsula. Dom Joam Pacheco, we feel, is reflected in all 
 this narrative, as the squire of the Count of Foix is 
 reflected in the on dit of Orthez. For what, after all, 
 are the Chronicles of Froissart but a vast mirror, across 
 which pass the shadows, knightly or plebeian, extravagant 
 or wise, with whom the canon of Chimay conversed on 
 his passage through a world of infinite variety ? His 
 Chronicles are not always history ; but they never fail 
 to be a gallery of historical portraits. 
 
 K
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE SALE OF BLOIS. 
 
 "AT the request of the high and mighty Prince, Guy de 
 
 Chatillon, Count ofBlois I, John Froissart . . . have 
 
 again stirred myself, and enter into my smithy to work at 
 the forging of this high and noble matter to which in past 
 time I gave heed. Consider now, you who read . . . Now 
 I have come to know and to collect so many facts of 
 which I treat and discourse in so many parts. And to 
 inform you of the truth, I began young, at the age of 
 twenty years ; and these deeds and adventures and my own 
 life began the world together: and I have always taken more 
 pleasure in them than in aught else ; and, verily, God has 
 given me so much grace, that I have been well received 
 by all parties, and in the palaces of kings, and especially 
 in the palace of King Edward of England and the noble 
 Queen his wife ... by whom in my youth I was brought 
 up ; and served her with fair ditties and amorous treatises ; 
 and for love of the service of the noble and valiant lady 
 to whom I belonged, all other lords, kings, dukes, earls, 
 barons and knights of whatever nation, loved me and 
 heard and saw me willingly. Also, in the pay of that 
 good lady, and at her charges, and at the charges of the 
 noble lords, I, in my time, have visited the greater part of
 
 THE SALE OF B LOIS. 107 
 
 Christendom, . . . and everywhere that I went I made 
 enquiry of ancient knights and squires, who had been in 
 great feats of arms, and knew how to speak fitly of them, 
 and also of certain heralds to verify and justify these 
 matters. Thus have I collected this high and noble 
 history, and the gentle Count of Blois named above greatly 
 concerned himself therewith ; the which, as long as I live, 
 by the help of God, I shall continue ; for the more I follow 
 and labour it, the more it pleaseth me. For as the noble 
 knight or squire loving the feats of arms doth persevere 
 in the same, and be thereby expert and made perfect, so 
 in labouring of this noble matter, I delight and take 
 pleasure." 
 
 After this fashion begins the fourth and last book 
 of the Chronicles, dedicated, like the preceding ones, 
 to Guy, Count of Blois. But before writing it Froissart 
 had quitted the castle of Blois; it was at Valenciennes 
 that he passed the autumn of the year 1389. Many 
 changes were come about in the castle of le Quesnoy. 
 Count William the Insane had expired at last, after 
 thirty years of madness and melancholy seclusion ; 
 his brother Aubert who succeeded him had definitively 
 retired to his palace at the Hague, and young William 
 of Ostrevant, in his turn Governor of Hainault, ruled 
 from le Quesnoy the native country of Froissart. 
 
 Froissart had more particularly attached himself to 
 this young Prince the previous year during a ten days' 
 visit that Count William had made the Count of Blois, 
 in company with his father-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. 
 His influence upon Froissart soon becomes visible ; the
 
 io8 FROISSA&T. 
 
 political leaning of the historian towards the side of 
 Burgundy shows itself very unmistakably from the 
 commencement of the fourth book of the Chronicles. 
 One sees there, little by little, the dawning of that 
 fatal ascendancy of the houses of Bavaria and Burgundy 
 which, thirty years later, was to menace the very life of 
 France. Froissart had always been strongly influenced 
 by his environment, and at le Quesnoy he became 
 more than Burgundian. The cruel and resentful prejudice 
 th'at he exhibits against the unhappy Valentina Visconti, 
 and his hatred and disparagement of Duke Giovanni 
 Galeasso of Milan, doubtless reflect the rancour of 
 Duke Aubert, whose family were triply allied with 
 the children of Barnabo Visconti, deposed and put to 
 death by the father of the Duchess of Orleans. The 
 insinuations and reproaches of which the chronicler 
 is prodigal in respect of the young brother of Charles 
 VI. recall, to one who knows how to read between the 
 lines, the contests of Duke Aubert and his son with the 
 brother of the king, concerning certain lands in 
 Hainault. And Froissart, alas ! takes to heart the 
 interests of the house of Bavaria in a degree that 
 renders him unjust and ungrateful towards his master 
 and lord, the Count of Blois. 
 
 Whilst the star of the house of Bavaria was waxing 
 in splendour from day to day, the glory of the Chatillon 
 was waning miserably to extinction. Towards the 
 end of June 1391 a great misfortune struck the very 
 heart of the Count of Blois. His only legitimate child, 
 Louis, the young husband of the Princess of Berry
 
 THE SALE OF LOIS. 109 
 
 (daughter to Duke Jean), died in a few days of a 
 malignant fever. The boy would have inherited all 
 the riches of the Chatillon, the county of Blois, the county 
 of Dunois, the lordships of Chimay, Avesnes, Beaumont, 
 Louvion, Argies, Landrecies, with Goude and Schoonhoven 
 and other estates in Holland and Zealand. Even 
 without the county of Soissons, sold by Guy de Blois 
 to the Sire de Coucy, to procure money for his 
 ransom, it was an inheritance to set a poor relation 
 dreaming. 
 
 And, in fact, a whole swarm of cousins, poor and 
 rich, had an eye on this enormous property. Immedi- 
 ately on the death of Louis, the Count of Blois saw him- 
 self surrounded by greedy heirs. The Duke of Burgundy, 
 Duke Aubert, the Duke of Juliers, the Duke of 
 Lancaster were there, side by side with the unfortunate 
 Jean de Blois, dit of Brittainy, the Sire de Conflans 
 in Champagne, and other less illustrious claimants. 
 They all made their calculations, and disputed over 
 the estate among themselves, whilst the actual pro- 
 prietor, the Count of Blois, looked on with empty 
 pockets. The dowry alone of the young widow was 
 formidable ; it was charged entirely on the county of 
 Blois, and amounted to 6000 gold francs a year. This 
 was a great deal in a century in which a Viscount of 
 Rouen lived on an income of 350 francs, and a Regnault 
 d'Aurignac, the greatest provision merchant of his time, 
 made a boast of 30,000 francs of capital. Briefly, the 
 Count of Blois saw none too clearly how he was to pay the 
 money, and he well knew that his daughter-in-law's
 
 no F&OISSART. 
 
 father, Jean de Berry, would exact it to the last 
 halfpenny. 
 
 Guy de Blois had always lived from hand to mouth. 
 Rich or poor, always prodigal, always generous, he had 
 thrown away money by handfuls, according to the whim 
 of the moment. It is not for us to blame him, since it is to 
 him we owe the Chronicles of Froissart, for which during 
 twenty years, " il fit grands coutages." Now that, old and 
 melancholy, the Count and Countess of Blois were gone to 
 hide their broken life in their old fortress of Chateau- 
 Renaud, the money questions were taking a new impor- 
 tance, and ignoble cares came to insult the majesty of 
 their grief. This is the painful history as related to us by 
 Froissart. 
 
 Some eight leagues distant from Chateau-Renaud, the 
 King was at Tours with his brother, the young Duke of 
 Touraine, who had recently married the thrice-rich Valen- 
 tina Visconti. The fortunate bridegroom had more money 
 than he knew what to do with. He was not yet Duke of 
 Orleans ; and feeling himself straitened in his narrow 
 duchy of Torraine, coveted the fair county of Blois, whose 
 boundaries touched his own, and which belonged to a man 
 ill, devoured by debts, and just bereaved of his only 
 son. 
 
 Froissart gives us to understand it was Enguerrand de 
 Coucy who suggested to the young prince the idea of 
 buying the inheritance of Guy de Chatillon. Messire 
 Enguerrand was at Tours with the King and his brother ; 
 he accompanied them to Chateau-Renaud, and when the 
 young Duke cast his eyes on this Naboth's vineyard,
 
 THE SALE OF B LOIS. in 
 
 " Why do you not buy it ? " we can irnagine Messire 
 Enguerrand to have said ; " Guy de Chatillon has no 
 obsolete prejudices concerning the sale of an inheritance. 
 He sold his county of Soissons, and to-day he is as much 
 in need of money as he was twenty years ago." " The 
 Sieur de Coucy was greatly to blame in this affair," 
 Froissart tells us expressly. 
 
 The Count of Blois, however, was not easy to persuade. 
 At the first word he lost his temper. " Or I make any 
 such bargain to sell mine inheritance, or to disinherit mine 
 heirs, to my shame and rebuke (such at least are the words 
 that Froissart puts into his mouth), I shall rather sell or lay 
 to pledge all the plate I have." In like manner, at the 
 present day in England, where the right of primogeniture 
 still exists, there is no expedient to which recourse is not 
 had before touching the property to which the direct heir 
 succeeds ; to live like a rat in a corner of the castle is 
 preferred to risking the integrity of the inheritance. In 
 the fourteenth century, sentiment on this point was clear 
 and precise ; even failing a direct heir, the rights of suc- 
 cession remained inviolable. The inheritance of Blois, as 
 a matter of mere seignorial right and conscience, morally 
 belonged to John of Brittainy, cousin to Guy de Chat- 
 illon. 
 
 But the young King of France, the Prince his brother, 
 and Messire Enguerrand de Coucy were not to be swayed 
 by considerations such as these. For many reasons it 
 was desirable that the county of Blois, situated between 
 Touraine and Orleans, both appanages of the Crown, should 
 also belong to a prince of the blood royal. The young
 
 ii2 FROJSSART. 
 
 Prince, whose mind was already turned to the Duchy of 
 Orleans, who had already entered into negotiations with 
 Messire Enguerrand for the purchase of the county of 
 Soissons, who was about to buy Coucy and Dreux and 
 Angouleme and Luxembourg, was proposing to make for 
 himself, along with a principality in Italy, a great terri- 
 torial position in France. He never ceased laying siege to 
 the old and unhappy spendthrift ; he did not disdain to buy 
 over the all-powerful valet Sohier, nor to use flattery 
 towards the Countess of Blois. At length the affair was 
 arranged in consideration of a sum of 200,000 francs for 
 the county of Blois, 60,000 francs to indemnify the Duke of 
 Berry, and a second sum of 200,000 francs for the estates 
 of Hainault, of Zealand, and of Holland. 
 
 The estates of Hainault ! There, undoubtedly, lay the 
 point of pain, the obscure cause of the anger and the re- 
 proaches ofFroissart he who had reconciled himself easily 
 enough to the sale of the county of Soissons. He speaks 
 only of the county of Blois ; but it is of Hainault that he 
 is thinking ; he pities John of Brittainy only, but his 
 thoughts are with Duke Aubert and William of Ostrevant. 
 What, the inheritance of Jean de Beaumont, the cradle 
 of so many Wallon heroes, to pass into the hands of 
 strangers ! In consequence of the opposition offered by 
 Duke Aubert, the sale of the lands dependent on the 
 county of Hainault never took place ; but Froissart, 
 nevertheless, is incapable of calming his hot indignation. 
 In his narrative of the sale of Blois, he shows neither 
 moderation nor justice towards his former master. With 
 what bitterness he stigmatises the foolish and vulgar
 
 THE SALE OF B LOIS. 113 
 
 Duchess, persuaded to an act that dishonours her husband, 
 through fear of becoming " a poor woman, stripped of 
 everything," whilst the sale of the inheritance leaves her "a 
 rich lady and puissant of gold and silver and jewels." 
 With what contempt he displays to us the sordid soul of 
 the valet Sohier, that " Marmouset parvenu," thinking of 
 nothing but his gains. And the Count of Blois himself, 
 what is to be said of him who, " as though young, ignorant 
 and ill-advised," allows himself to be led by his wife and 
 his valet, and makes this poor bargain of his inheritance 
 and his honour? 
 
 In all this there is clearly a spirit of rancour and 
 ill-will. The researches cf our learned friend Count 
 Albert de Circourt have lately brought to light the true 
 circumstances of the sale of Blois. The acts still exist, 
 in the cartulaire of Blois, under the number KK. 896, in 
 the national Archives. They overthrow altogether the 
 story told by Froissart. These acts are signed by the 
 Count and Countess of Blois on the I3th October 1391, 
 and the young prince only arrives at Tours on the loth 
 November! On the loth November the temptation, on 
 the 1 3th October the sin. What becomes of that rdle of 
 eager tempter assigned to the young brother of the King ; 
 what of those early and secret rides from Tours to 
 Chateau-Renaud, that consent wrested from an aged 
 knight, sick in body and soul? Froissart shows himself 
 no better acquainted with the part played by Sohier, 
 who received 500 francs only a slender enough com- 
 mission for an honest broker on a total of 260,00x3 francs. 
 
 Several of the knights and chamberlains of the Count 
 
 L
 
 ii4 FROISSART. 
 
 of Blois received as much ; and a few months previously 
 the Duke of Touraine had granted to the three chamber- 
 lains of the Count de Longueville a commission of 3000 
 francs upon a purchase that did not exceed 50,000 francs. 
 Sohier, then, was not so richly rewarded as to justify 
 a cry of treason in respect of his conduct. 
 
 Possibly, in thus blackening the parts played by Sohier 
 and the Countess of Blois, Froissart hoped to diminish 
 the responsibility of his ancient master. But his narrative 
 swarms with errors less easily explained. The Duke 
 of Burgundy, whom the chronicler shows us befooled 
 by his nephews, and furious at their success, lent himself 
 with the best will in the world to the business, which 
 was accomplished by the agency of his servants. The 
 " poor bargain " itself was, upon the whole, an excellent 
 affair. T.he Count of Blois retained possession of his 
 county during his life, as well as a right upon the 
 subsidies ; and, in all honesty, Guy de Chatillon might 
 ask himself whether he were not acting in the interests 
 of his cousin, become his heir, in leaving him as in- 
 heritance, instead of a county burthened with debt beyond 
 the possibility of payment, a round sum of 200,000 
 francs. 
 
 In any case, the misunderstanding was profound 
 between the houses of Bavaria and Chatillon. Froissart 
 took part with his sovereign as against his master. He 
 made, perhaps, a sort of duty of his ingratitude, for 
 he had a lofty idea of the submission due to Caesar, 
 and he does not hesitate to declare that it is in this 
 sense that the commandment
 
 THE SALE OF BL01S. 115 
 
 " De tout ton coeur, de t'ame toute, 
 Ton seigneur ainme et si le doutte," 
 
 should be interpreted, everyone being bound in honour 
 to love and serve the lord of his own land. Honour 
 then it was that commanded Froissart to leave his old 
 master, become a little mad and overwhelmed with 
 debts, and honour that compelled him to follow the more 
 brilliant destinies of his sovereign, the Count of Hainault. 
 The nobles of Hainault formed, as it were, one large 
 family ; and among so many cousins quarrels were not 
 unfrequent. As these lords were, for the most part, more 
 or less the patrons of our chronicler, he also had his share 
 in their estrangements and reconciliations. It is probable 
 that he saw no harm in thus passing from Robert of Namur 
 to Wenceslas of Luxembourg, from Wenceslas to Guy de 
 Blois, from Count Guy to Duke Aubert. He did not desert 
 the noble family ; he remained always faithful to the house 
 of Queen Philippa. It was these lords, they or their 
 fathers, who had peopled his childish dreams ; and it was 
 in gazing on them from afar that the little schoolboy of 
 Valenciennes had been seized with that passion for 
 chivalry which was to influence and direct all his life and 
 all his work. 
 
 The books of the Chronicles, which had cost the Count 
 of Blois so many fair florins, were to contain the notice of 
 his death. It was in 1397 that Guy de Chatillon died at 
 Avesnes, in Hainault. After the sale of Blois, he had sold 
 also his historic castle of Beaumont, and ended his days 
 in such destitution that the Countess was compelled to 
 renounce the succession. Following the melancholy Flemish
 
 n6 FROISSART. 
 
 custom, she laid her household keys on the coffin of her 
 husband ; and, confronted by this heartrending spectacle, 
 Froissart loses his severity for a moment ; he recalls the 
 days of his youth. " The Count of Blois," he says, " gave 
 diligent heed in his time that I, Sir John Froissart, should 
 write and ordain this history. And much did it cost him 
 in money ; for so high and great a work could be done 
 only at cost and great charges. God keep his soul ! He 
 was my lord and my master, and an honourable lord, and of 
 great esteem. And no need was there for him to make 
 the poor treaties and bargains that he made, and to sell his 
 inheritance. But he lightly gave credence to those who 
 
 desired neither good, nor honour, nor profit to him 
 
 Consider what great damage a lord or any other may do to 
 his heirs by giving credence to evil counsel ! " In spite of 
 all, the lands of Hainault, of Holland and of Zealand, 
 returned to their legitimate sovereign ; and this it is, 
 perhaps, that chiefly interests Froissart in the death of his 
 former master. As for the old knight, they forgot to bury 
 him in the splendid mausoleum that he had caused to be 
 constructed during his lifetime; a Franciscan convent at 
 Valenciennes afforded him the last hospitality. God keep 
 his soul !
 
 Pn>rlm8tion of the ntofrefil uf \\>i trnrt b^trotf n th# lyings 
 of JrMinf if Anb n$&nb. ft(h: tte j^itmuf f rtntfs' watoru
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 TOWARDS the close of 1393 the Congress of Amiens, 
 many hindrances notwithstanding, succeeded in concluding 
 the truce so long projected between France and England. 
 Froissart was present at the Congress ; it was there, pos- 
 sibly, that he presented the Duke of Orleans, whom he 
 detested, with a copy of Mcliador. But a matter of greater 
 interest to him must have been his meeting with two of the 
 three surviving sons of his benefactress, Queen Philippa. 
 Froissart has left us full-length portraits of these two. royal 
 dukes : John of Lancaster, subtle, ambiguous, a younger 
 son without importance to begin with, but risen now to 
 more than princely dignity, with pretensions to the throne 
 itself; Thomas of Gloucester, the idol of the English 
 people, a big bull-dog of a man, brutal and brave, hating 
 to loosen hold on his prey. We see him pass, swearing and 
 storming, through the last chapters of the Chronicles. 
 In vain he cries with all his force against the cessation of 
 war with so rich a country as France ; no one any longer 
 pays heed to a crabbed old man, and the truce is concluded 
 in spite of him. 
 
 Ever since the meeting with the Sire de Coucy, in 1389,
 
 n8 FROISSART. 
 
 Froissart had been awaiting the end of the war with 
 impatience. More than once he speaks of how he had 
 
 " great affection to go and see the realm of England 
 
 Therefore I desired to see the country, thinking thereby 
 I should live much the longer ; for I had not been there 
 twenty-seven years before." Might one not almost be- 
 lieve that Froissart had forgotten the second redaction of 
 the Chronicles, and that for these twenty-seven years past he 
 had sat weeping by the waters of the rivers of Babylon ? 
 
 And yet, at Lestinnes, at Chimay, at Blois, and even at 
 Tarbes, who more French in his sympathies than the 
 " chaplain " of Count Guy ? Doubtless, the tearing asunder 
 of old bonds in his rupture with Guy de Chatillon had 
 given new value to those shining years of his youth, before 
 his return to his own country. The old chronicler goes 
 back to his first love. Nothing attached him any longer 
 to France ; nothing held him back any longer from 
 England. His new masters were neither French nor 
 English. The house of Hainault-Bavaria, holding its 
 county of Hainault from France, its counties of Holland 
 and Zealand from the Empire, knew how to bargain away 
 its sympathies, and loved to play a double game. Nobody 
 knew exactly what were the opinions of Duke Aubert, who 
 paraded an English order of knighthood, and married his 
 children to cousins of the King of France. Nor had 
 Froissart now to reckon with the prejudices of Guy de 
 Blois ; there was nothing to detain him any longer ; he 
 decided to start on his journey. 
 
 " Many reasons moved me," he tells us. " One was, 
 because in my youth I had been brought up in the Court
 
 THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 119 
 
 of the noble King Edward of England and of the noble 
 Queen Philippa his wife, and among their children and the 
 barons of England." (It is en grand seigneur, indeed, that 
 the little secretary of former days speaks to us now !) 
 " Therefore I desired to see the country ; though I found 
 not those lords that I left alive there, yet, at least, I should 
 see their heirs, the which should do me much good to see, and 
 also to justify the histories and matters that I had written 
 of them. And, or I took my journey, I spake with my 
 dear lords, Duke Aubert of Bavaria, Count of Hainault, 
 and my Lord William his son, and with my right 
 honourable Lady Jane, Duchess of Brabant and of 
 Luxembourg." Froissart, in like manner, demanded letters 
 of credit from Enguerrand de Coucy, and the Sire de 
 Commignies ; but, and the thing is significant, he asked 
 nothing from Guy de Blois. Provided with recommenda 
 tions to the King of England, as well as to the royal Dukes, 
 Froissart started in the month of June 1394. 
 
 He took with him a manuscript bound in velvet, with 
 silver-gilt clasps, containing " all the matters of amours 
 and moralities that in four-and-twenty years before I had 
 by the help of God and of Love made and compiled." 
 It was a gift for the young King, so unhappy in love, who 
 still wept his young wife, " and could not forget her, 
 forasmuch as they had been married in their youth 
 together." This King Froissart had seen twenty-seven 
 years previously, when the child was christened in the 
 cathedral church of Bordeaux. 
 
 To revisit the scene of a past happiness is, of all enter-
 
 120 FROISSART. 
 
 prises, the most hazardous. On the I2th July Froissart 
 once more set foot on English soil. " And when I came 
 to Dover, I found no man of my knowledge, it was so long 
 sith I had been in England, and the houses were all newly 
 changed, and young children were become men and 
 women who knew me not, nor I them." Two days 
 later, Froissart went on to Canterbury, where he saw the 
 tomb of the Black Prince, and the empty coat of mail, 
 which hangs above it still. The same day it was announced 
 that the King was expected, and Froissart determined to 
 await him ; but when, the day following, the King arrived 
 with his company of young lords and damosels, the poor 
 canon of Chimay was " all abashed." Not one of the three 
 uncles of the King, sedate persons whom he had known in 
 his youth, were present. He saw none but young people 
 and young ladies, all fresh and new. " And I was among 
 them, and they seemed to me all new folks, I knew no 
 person ; the time was sore changed in England in twenty- 
 eight years." Froissart asks news of his former friends, and 
 the answer rings like the toll of a passing bell ; dead, dead, 
 dead ! What happiness when pronouncing at length the 
 name of Sir Richard Stury, a great friend of the Despencers, 
 with whom Froissart had often associated at their house, at 
 the King's Court, and again, more recently, at the Court of 
 Wenceslas in Brussels what joy to learn that Sir Richard 
 at least is still in this world, a courtier still, and member 
 of the King's Council ! " But he was not there " ; and 
 Froissart falls back on Sir Thomas Percy, who advised 
 him to follow the royal cortege, and await a better moment 
 for presenting his book.
 
 THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 121 
 
 Froissart then followed the Court from Leeds, in Kent, 
 to Rochester ; from Rochester to Eltham. And walking 
 in the galleries of Eltham one Tuesday after dinner 
 thinking, no doubt, of many vanished things the good 
 canon fell in with an old knight, who looked at him, 
 and whom he at once recognised : it was Sir Richard 
 Stury ! " He knew me anon, and yet in twenty- four 
 years he had not seen me before ; and the last time 
 was in Colleberghe in Brussels, in the house of Count 
 VVenceslas of Brabant." Long did the two old friends 
 walk up and down together, talking of the past, and of 
 matters of the present day. Sir Richard Stury instructs 
 Froissart concerning the intrigues and jealousies that 
 surround King Richard. Already mistrust is felt of the 
 weak Edmund, Duke of York ; of the too great popularity 
 of young Henry of Lancester; and above all, of the 
 violent and imperious character of Thomas, Earl of 
 Gloucester, which urged the people onward to war and 
 revolt. 
 
 Handsome and high-spirited, the young King attracted 
 Froissart ; his great fault, pride, the fault that was to be 
 his ruin, did not ill become a prince who felt himself 
 alone among enemies. Froissart's affection had always 
 followed this son of the Black Prince, the grandson of 
 his benefactress, whom he had known from the moment 
 of his birth. Now at last he was to see him in person. 
 Sir Richard Stury spoke to the King of the chronicler 
 and of his book ; the happy canon was summoned ; he 
 entered the royal chamber, holding his manuscript in 
 his hand. Let us leave the chronicler's pen, delicate 
 
 M
 
 122 FROISSART. 
 
 as the brush of the illuminator, to depict for us this 
 little scene. 
 
 " The King took the book, and when he opened it, it 
 pleased him greatly, for it was fair enlumined and written, 
 and covered with crimson velvet, with ten buttons of 
 silver and gold, and roses of gold in the midst, with two 
 great clasps, gilt, richly wrought. When the King 
 demanded me whereof it treated, I made answer : ' Love ! ' 
 Whereof the King was glad, and looked in it and read 
 it in many places, for he could read and speak French 
 very well. And he caused it to be taken by a knight 
 to bear it into his secret chamber, and made me always 
 better and better cheer."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 A PITY, indeed, that this handsome young King should 
 so little resemble his grandfather, the great hero of the 
 English arms, or his grandmother, the Queen who excelled 
 all others in goodness. King Richard loved peace ; and 
 if he exacted the war-subsidies to the last penny, it was 
 to spend them all on the splendours of his Court. King 
 Richard cared nothing for his people ; surrounded by 
 his favourites, he neglected the affairs of state. There 
 was no longer any justice in the land " If the peasants 
 complain of the injuries done to them, their lord being 
 absent, they are not heard ; there is none to do them 
 right." Commerce was in danger. Troops of brigands, 
 certain of impunity, began to show themselves upon the 
 highroads, and the merchants no longer ventured to 
 go from town to town, "a thing out of all custom and 
 usage in England, where every one has learned to live 
 in peace." 
 
 There was much, there was everything, to draw Froissart 
 towards this King haughty and gracious, autocratic and 
 proud ; but his admiration was not unmixed. No one, 
 it is certain, can accuse the canon of Chimay of too 
 great a weakness for the lower orders. He can never
 
 i2 4 FROISSART. 
 
 express with sufficient warmth his horror of subjects who 
 revolt against their lord ; he finds, indeed, to designate 
 them, epithets that are not a little gross. Established order 
 is for him a thing divinely instituted ; to try to disturb 
 it a mere work of impiety. Nevertheless, Froissart was 
 a native of Hainault ; and something there was in his 
 character of those turbulent Flemish, whom he condemns, 
 but who were his near neighbours, and his brothers. He 
 cannot support the spectacle of a tyrant, for tyranny, 
 no less than revolution, seems to him a form of revolt 
 brought about by pride against the will of God. 
 
 Richard of Bordeaux, lettered and amiable though 
 he might be, was nevertheless a tyrant, and very ill-placed 
 on the throne of a country so free as England. The people 
 murmur when he wastes their subsidies on fine clothes 
 for his favourites. " There was never before any King 
 of England who spent so much on his house as he did, by 
 100,000 florins every year." The people tremble when the 
 Duke of Gloucester disappears, assassinated ; when the Earl 
 of Arundel disappears, assassinated ; when young Henry of 
 Derby, the heir of the Lancasters, is banished from the king- 
 dom. The King sees nothing, hears nothing, surrounded 
 by his minions, " who were in such great favour, that none 
 durst speak against them." He slept protected by a guard 
 of 2000 archers, after the fashion of the tyrants of Lom- 
 bardy, a fashion never used before by the kings of free 
 England. Froissart loves this haughty and ill-advised 
 King, " ce roi angoissieux de cceur," but he never- 
 theless sees he cannot avoid seeing and hearing 
 the general disapprobation. With a heavy heart he
 
 AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND. 125 
 
 finds himself contemplating the end of a great race, and 
 recalls, as one of the common folk in their superstition 
 might recall, an ancient prophecy by Merlin, a page 
 of Brut, which had been interpreted as promising the 
 Crown of England to the house of Lancaster. The King 
 was doing all in his power to realise that prophecy. 
 A sudden and secret death struck down all who dared 
 to blame his conduct. Disregarding the impatience of 
 his subjects, he insisted on marrying a French princess ; 
 the national treasure was being wasted in insane 
 extravagances ; he profited by no lesson. It was too 
 soon after the reign of Edward III. Poor canon of 
 Chimay ! He had come to England, with his old child's 
 heart still young and swelling with hope ; he goes back, 
 saddened to death, seeing written everywhere " Ichabod, 
 the glory has departed." 
 
 On leaving England, Froissart returned to Hainault, 
 to Chimay, or le Quesnoy, or possibly to Valenciennes. 
 " When I shall come into Hainault, which country I am 
 of," he says to the English squire, Henry Cristede, " know 
 that I shall be examined of many things " ; and he speaks 
 of the curiosity felt by Duke Aubert of Bavaria, as well 
 as by his son William, concerning the English expedition 
 to Ireland. These are now his " dear lords " ; and we 
 hear nothing of the old Guy de Chatillon, dying slowly in 
 his castle of Avesnes. 
 
 Under the protection of his new patrons, Froissart sets to 
 work to finish the fourth book of the Chronicles. Living 
 far retired from the current of great events, he describes 
 the insignificant war conducted in Friesland by the
 
 i 2 6 FROISSART. 
 
 Count of Hainault and his son ; he speaks of the bad 
 news that constantly comes from across the straits, of 
 the exile of Henry of Lancaster, of the welcome given 
 to the young Prince at the Court of France, of the invita- 
 tion sent to him by his " brother and cousin " William 
 of Ostrevant, " to come and divert himself in Hainault, 
 and to remain there, which would give great pleasure to 
 him and also to the Countess of Ostrevant, his wife." 
 The invitation is not accepted ; there is talk of marrying 
 the young Prince to Marie de Berry, widow of Louis 
 de Chatillon ; and he has too many affairs on his hands 
 to bury himself in a dull provincial life. But Richard II. 
 interferes with a high hand, and breaks off the exile's 
 marriage. In Hainault, as in France, people murmur 
 against so much tyranny, till they learn at last that 
 the tyrant is punished, that Henry of Lancaster has 
 invaded England, that he has made the King prisoner, 
 that the King has ceded to him his kingdom and his 
 crown. Finally, the news comes of the mysterious assas- 
 sination of King Richard II. The pen drops from 
 Froissart's hand in horror. It is the "Finis" of the 
 Chronicles. 
 
 The chronicler, and that is sad, hardly dares speak 
 of this murder, which fills him with shuddering dismay, 
 and a sort of religious terror. Kill the anointed of the 
 Lord, the grandson of Philippa of Hainault ! The priest 
 and the man alike are in revolt against such a sacrilege. 
 But how stigmatise as he deserves an usurper who is on 
 the best terms with the Count of Ostrevant, a sacrilegious 
 assassin, to whom Duke Aubert, immediately after the
 
 AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND. 127 
 
 murder, addresses his affectionate congratulations ? Since 
 he must keep silence on so great a crime, the chronicler 
 will at least never more write of anything in the 
 world. 
 
 A few words added, as though in haste, relate the 
 " subtraction of obedience " (soustraction d' obedience] pro- 
 nounced against Benedict XIII. in 1398, and the deposi- 
 tion of the King of Germany, which took place in 1400. 
 The end of the schism, the accession of a Duke of 
 Bavaria to the Imperial throne, can extort from the 
 weary pen of the Chronicler a few halting words 
 only, brief and incomplete. The King is dead. The 
 Chronicles, like the century, close with the assassination 
 of Richard II.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE THIRD REDACTION OF THE "CHRONICLES." 
 
 FROISSART survived some years, at least, the unhappy 
 Prince for whom he dared not weep. Certain phrases 
 at the end of the Chronicles indicate that he also 
 survived his patron, Duke Aubert, who died the I3th 
 December 1404. Unfortunately, nothing is known of these 
 latter years of the illustrious writer's life. 
 
 A few words said in passing on the state of the 
 fortifications of le Quesnoy might lead one to suppose 
 that Froissart in his old age frequented the castle of the 
 last of his masters. Doubtless he may have held on his 
 knee little Madame Jacobe"e of Hainault, whose touching 
 history has been recorded by Robert Browning in the 
 most charming of his dramatic pieces, Colombe's Birthday. 
 On the other hand, it is possible that he may have ended 
 his days at Chimay, of which place he was canon and 
 treasurer. The learned Baron de Kervyn, so fertile in 
 hypotheses, draws an attractive picture of the scene 
 in which Froissart's extreme old age may have been 
 passed. 
 
 " Monastic houses, situated behind the collegiate church 
 and exempt from all taxation, were reserved for the
 
 THIRD REDACTION OF THE CHRONICLES. 129 
 
 canons. They were reached by two flights of steps, a 
 small garden lying in front of each. . . . From the 
 windows could be seen a deep ravine, where smiling 
 meadows lay spread beneath the shade of venerable oaks 
 The freshness of the landscape added to the silence and 
 the solemn calm of the retreat. 
 
 " Besides the dean and twelve canons, the chapter 
 included a treasurer, who received all the offerings in 
 wax made at funerals. . . . He enjoyed the rights of 
 basse justice. . . . There was a mayor under Froissart." 
 
 All this may be ; but there is nothing to assure us that 
 the canon of Chimay, who loved the world so well, 
 acquired rural tastes in his old age. Perhaps he may have 
 preferred to the green valley of Chimay, with all its treasure 
 of white wax, that house in Valenciennes where he had 
 already worked so much at the Chronicles ; perhaps he 
 breathed his last in some turret of le Quesnoy. The same 
 obscurity that enveloped his birth came to surround his 
 latest years. 
 
 But in whatever spot he may have ended his days, it was 
 in a state of honourable ease, occupied to the last with 
 grave and noble thoughts. For although all trace of 
 Froissart's private life is lost to us from the time of his 
 return from England, a happy discovery, made by Baron 
 Kervyn, acquaints us with the last occupations of Froissart's 
 green old age. Being in Rome in January 1860, Baron 
 Kervyn requested permission to examine a manuscript of 
 the Chronicles, the existence of which had been matter of 
 knowledge for many years; to his great astonishment, he 
 
 found himself in presence of a new version, of which this 
 
 N
 
 130 FROJSSART. 
 
 copy was the sole representative. The manuscript of the 
 Vatican contains a last redaction of the first book of the 
 Chronicles up to 1350. It belongs to the extreme old age 
 of the chronicler; on this point the indefatigable science 
 and critical acumen of the lamented M. Simeon Luce 
 support the intuitive perception of Baron Kervyn. The 
 essential aim of the third redaction seems to have been to 
 efface from the first book of the Chronicles those passages, 
 too numerous and too important, which Froissart had 
 borrowed from his predecessor, Jean-le-Bel. At the 
 beginning of his career Froissart had been well satisfied to 
 continue the work of a writer so highly esteemed as the 
 canon of Liege ; he felt no reluctance to shine at times 
 with a borrowed light. But, as the Chronicle grew, and 
 became by degrees a thing of glorious and lasting fame, so 
 the desire increased to call it wholly his own. Froissart's 
 last effort then, was to disengage from the mind and hand 
 of another the commencement of the great work of his life. 
 Old people love to talk of the past ; but in relating their 
 reminiscences they make a thousand allusions to the 
 present. In this way the redaction of Rome gives us, 
 scattered among its original matter, a number of piquant 
 details upon the origin of the Hundred Years' War ; 
 upon the little war of Friesland of 1401 ; upon the fortifi- 
 cations of le Quesnoy in the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century; and upon the mother of Edward III., that woman 
 " so sweet-tongued and feminine." Here Froissart relates 
 at greater length than elsewhere the enchantments of his 
 youth, his journey to Scotland, his rides through England 
 with young Despencer. The sunny hours of bygone years
 
 THIRD REDACTION OF THE CHRONICLES. 131 
 
 came back in these narratives of his latest days. And yet 
 these memories are not, perhaps, what is most precious in 
 the manuscript of the Vatican. 
 
 Here for the first, as also for the last time, we feel 
 in the chronicler something of the fibre of the his- 
 torian. Never before had the quick and alert spirit of 
 Froissart risen so high, nor shown itself of such serious 
 capacity. He penetrates to the profound meaning of 
 things ; he traces effects to their origin. The nations of 
 Europe whose picturesque diversity has afforded him so 
 much entertainment, appear to him now as so many per- 
 sonalities, each one with its character and its destiny. 
 How severe and masterly, for example, his portrait of the 
 English to whom he cannot forgive the murder of their 
 King; how weighty the charge, mingled with praises, 
 brought against that strong and vigorous race, who cannot 
 and who will not submit to the yoke of a tyrant. This is 
 what he says : 
 
 " The English suffer patiently for a time, but in the 
 end they pay back cruelly. The lord who governs them 
 rises each day and sleeps at night, at too great peril 
 to himself ; for never will they love him if he be 
 not victorious, nor if he love not arms and to war 
 against his neighbour, and especially against those who 
 are stronger and richer than they themselves. . . 
 The English delight and comfort themselves in battles 
 and in killing. Too covetous and envious are they of 
 the goods of others, and cannot perfectly or naturally 
 join themselves in love or in alliance with any strange 
 nation. . . . And where the people wish to show their
 
 1 32 FROISSART. 
 
 power, the nobles cannot long stand against them. 
 Nevertheless, they have for long been well agreed 
 together, for the nobles ask nothing of the people but 
 what is reasonable. Also it would not be endured that 
 they should take, without payment, so much as an egg 
 
 or a fowl The gentlemen are noble and loyal, 
 
 but the common people fell, dangerous, proud, and 
 disloyal. The king cannot tax his people ; no, the people 
 would not suffer it. There are certain fixed ordinances 
 and compacts, and by these the king is aided ; and in 
 
 times of war the compact is doubled England 
 
 is, of all countries in the world, the best protected. 
 Otherwise the English could not and would not know how 
 to live. It is altogether necessary that a king, who is 
 their lord, should order himself by them, and incline 
 
 himself greatly to their will Those of London 
 
 are the most powerful in all England .... and when 
 the Londoners agree together, none dare resist. They 
 
 can do more than all the remainder of England 
 
 They said, those of London, ' We have nothing to do 
 with a slothful and sluggish king, too careful of his 
 ease and his pleasures ; we would sooner kill half-a- 
 hundred, one after the other, than not have a king 
 to our mind !'.... The nature of the English is such, 
 
 that they always fear that they will be deceived 
 
 They are cruel and haughty There is not, under 
 
 heaven, a people so dangerous, nor so marvellous to hold, 
 nor more varying, than are the English. As acquaintance 
 they are fair, and are of a fair semblance ; but no one 
 who is wise should trust them too far."
 
 THIRD REDACTION OF THE CHRONICLES. 133 
 
 What an admirable historical portrait ! All the history 
 of the haughty, democratic and free nation is contained 
 in essence and in epitome in these few lines. And 
 notwithstanding the lofty and severe objectivity of the 
 picture, how plainly one discerns at the same time the 
 stifled anger, the long-cherished rancour of the great artist 
 who traces it. He has not forgiven those who assassinated 
 the grandson of Queen Philippa. This charge against 
 the English people, this denunciation of the murder of 
 Richard II., which the protege of Duke Aubert had 
 not the right to pronounce, the historian of Edward III. 
 finds means to thunder forth ; and, unable to reach the 
 illustrious criminal, he hurls his bolt at the entire 
 race.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 "LES VRAYES CHRONIQUES " OF MESSIRE JEAN-LE-BEL. 
 
 WHEN, after the death of the unhappy Guy de Blois, 
 his possessions were sold by auction, Duke Aubert of 
 Bavaria purch.ised two volumes for the considerable sum 
 of 26 livres. " Deux grands livres des Wieres de Franche 
 et D'Angleterre." What were these books? Were they 
 the Chronicles of Froissart or those of Jean-le-Bel ? 
 
 The presence of Jean de Croy's coat-of-arms on the 
 manuscripts of the second redaction made by Froissart 
 would seem to indicate that the original manuscript was 
 still in the Castle of Chimay when it came to Jean by 
 right of inheritance; the book may probably have made 
 part of the dowry of the Countess of Blois, who ended 
 her days at Chimay. On the other hand, it is almost 
 certain that Guy de Blois had in his possession at 
 Beaumont a manuscript of the Chroniques of Jean-le- 
 Bel ; they had been written for his grandfather, Jean de 
 Beaumont, of whom the canon of Liege was " moult 
 ami et secret." This book, belonging to the contents 
 of a castle already put up for sale, may have been 
 included in the auction. It was then, probably, this
 
 "LES VRAYES CMRONJQUES." 135 
 
 famous and much-coveted book that Duke Aubert bought 
 at the sale of Guy de Blois. 
 
 The Chroniques of Messire Jean-le-Bel was in its time 
 a work of great celebrity. Jean de Hemricourt, Jean 
 d'Outremeuse, and, above all, Froissart, have preserved for 
 us the fame of its author ; but the work itself had been 
 lost for centuries when, in 1847, a Belgian scholar, M. 
 Polain, discovered the first chapters incorporated in the 
 
 immense Chronicle of Jean d'Outremeuse. Fourteen years 
 
 / 
 later M. Paul Meyer, a young pupil of the Ecole des 
 
 Chartes, in which he now holds the post of director, found 
 in the library of Chalons-sur-Marne a manuscript in folio, 
 without the author's name, and catalogued under the title : 
 " Histoire vraye et notable des nouvelles guerres et choses 
 avenues depuis 1'an 1326, jusqu'en Tan 1361 en France, 
 en Angleterre,"etc. M. Paulin Paris, to whom this treasure 
 trove was announced, did not hesitate, on the information 
 communicated to him, to recognise in it the work of Jean- 
 le-Bel. It was a discovery of the highest importance. 
 
 At a first glance, the book might be taken for a first 
 redaction of the first book of the Chronicles ; it has to 
 be read throughout to understand in what degree Froissart 
 robbed his precursor. Many marvellous pages, some 
 indeed of the finest in the Chronicles, have to be 
 referred back to their original author. In the first book 
 the sombre and magnificent description of the passage 
 of the Tyne by the English ; the story of the death of the 
 King of Scotland, and how he charged the Douglas to bear 
 his heart to the Holy Land, " seeing the body cannot go 
 thither " ; the touching episode of the ransom of the
 
 136 f'XOISSAXT. 
 
 burghers of Calais by the tears of the good Queen Philippa ; 
 all are due to the strong and tragic genius of Jean-le-Bel. 
 In the first chapters of the Chronicles almost everything 
 that seems impressed with a sombre and restrained emotion 
 comes from the same source. All that Froissart does is to 
 soften the abrupt temper of his rough predecessor,or to verify 
 certain details of geography and history. When Jean-le-Bel 
 remarks in relating the passage of the Tyne : "There were 
 certain of the English drowned, which mattered very little 
 to us" Froissart omits this not very evangelical reflection. 
 
 Nothing demonstrates better the essential difference 
 between the spirit of the two chroniclers than their 
 treatment of the episode of Edward III. and the Countess 
 of Salisbury. The charming pages in which Froissart 
 introduces this subject in his first manuscripts were taken 
 entirely from Jean-le-Bel. In the third version, that of 
 Rome, he passes over the incident in silence ; but in the 
 second redaction he adds a new and delightful page, stamped 
 with the mark of his lively and world-tempered spirit. 
 Arrived at the Countess's castle (he goes there to protect 
 her against the assaults of the Scotch), King Edward 
 requests his charming hostess to do him the favour to 
 play with him at chess. 
 
 " At the commencement of the game, the King, who 
 desired that something of his should remain with the lady, 
 attacked her, laughing: 'Lady, what may it please you 
 to put on the game ? ' And the lady replied : ' Sire, and 
 you ? ' Then the King laid down a very beautiful ring 
 that he wore on his finger, set with a large ruby. Then 
 said the lady : ' Sire, sire, I have no ring so rich as yours,
 
 "LES V RAVES CHXONJQUES." 137 
 
 ' Lady,' quoth the King, ' such as it is, lay it down, and pay 
 no heed to the difference.' 
 
 "Then the Countess, in order to do the King's will, 
 drew from her finger a ring of gold which was of no great 
 value. They played together at chess, the lady according 
 to her ability the best she could, that the King might not 
 deem her too simple and ignorant ; and the King dis- 
 sembling, for he did not play the best he could. And 
 whilst they played, he so gazed at the lady that she was all 
 abashed, and allowed a castle to be taken from her. And 
 when the King saw that she had lost a castle or a knight, or 
 whatever it might be, he also allowed something of his to 
 be taken, to set the lady right again in her game." 
 
 Thus they played together, the fair lady and the 
 amorous king, during some exquisite hours ; the King, 
 though he might lose the game, desiring at least to be 
 happy in his love. The Countess gains the ring, but 
 refuses out of courtesy to keep it ; and the King, provoked, 
 throws it to her waiting-maid. And so he takes leave : 
 " Lady, you remain in your castle, and I go to pursue mine 
 enemies ! " But the fair face of the lady haunts the King 
 in the midst of battlefields. He passes long hours in his 
 tent: "Shall I be loyal? Shall I be happy?" and dares 
 not make his choice. 
 
 What does Messire Jean-le-Bel give us in exchange for 
 this engaging picture? Under his iron-mailed hand the 
 whole thing assumes a tragic aspect. In a few words he 
 sets before us the unconquerable passion of Edward III., 
 and the unequal struggle between his conscience and the 
 wishes that agitate him. Sombre and jealous, the King
 
 138 FROISSART. 
 
 sends the Earl of Salisbury into Brittany, as David sends 
 the husband^of Bathsheba to the front rank of the battle. 
 What anguish and what baseness in the heart of the King, 
 who cannot refrain from going to see the wife of his loyal 
 servant, " to look whether she be not still fairer than 
 before." Yes, she is more beautiful than ever ! What 
 torture to watch her thus coming and going to and fro, 
 free in the midst of his men-at-arms. Then at night, in 
 the darkness of the castle, " when all the people were asleep, 
 and the noble lady was in her chamber," the haggard King 
 rises, commanding his astounded chamberlains that on pain 
 of death by the cord they should not disturb him in his 
 work of Tarquin and of tyrant. And he enters by force the 
 chamber where she whom he loves is sleeping and goes 
 away in the grey morning, remorse in his heart and shame 
 on his dishonoured brow. 
 
 When the Earl of Salisbury returns from the wars, what 
 misery for the wife who adores him! She tells him all her 
 sad history, and he looks at her, overwhelmed with 
 despair. " Of a surety, lady," he says, " what is done 
 cannot be undone. I can no longer abide there, dis- 
 honoured, where I have had so great honour ; I will go to 
 some other land there to pass the remnant of my days. 
 And you will remain here, like the virtuous lady I believe 
 you to be, and the half of my land will be for you and for 
 my child, your son, whom you will nourish and bring up. For 
 I think, surely, you will never see me more. And the other 
 half I shall have for my use, wherever I may be for so 
 long as I shall live. But I think it will not be for long. 
 And God grant that it may be soon, according to my desire."
 
 " LES VRAYES CHKONJQUES." 139 
 
 Thus these noble lovers bid each other farewell, at night 
 in their chamber, standing beside the dishonoured couch, 
 " his mourning on one side, and that virtuous lady on the 
 other." The brave Earl goes to commend his son to the 
 King in a few terrible and ironical words, in which there 
 still live for us the anger and the grief of an honourable 
 man ; then takes the road to Spain, and, since he has no 
 longer any King, gets himself killed for his God before Alge- 
 siras. As to the Countess, she did not long survive him. 
 " For no virtuous lady could live long in such distress." 
 
 This gloomy history is, possibly, only a legend without 
 authority. Froissart contradicts it ; and Jean-le-Bel, as we 
 know, did not love the English. " Jean-le-Bel," says 
 Froissart, " speaks of this amour with less discretion than I 
 should use." (Do we not hear the very accent, as it \vere, of 
 the secretary of Queen Philippa ?) " And I declare that I 
 am much acquainted with England . . . and I have never 
 heard this story." So be it : and it is possible, indeed, that 
 both Jean-le-Bel and Froissart occasionally drew on their 
 imagination. But, at least, the differing quality of that 
 imagination is shown us by the histories they drew from it. 
 
 The men are as different as their work. We know 
 Froissart, his easy and amiable character, his lively, just, 
 and observing mind, his exquisite and inexhaustible genius 
 inexhaustible as the chirp and chatter of birds in the 
 early morning. Froissart will live to be read as Herodotus 
 is still read ; for both one and the other offer to a world 
 grown old a clear cup in which still sparkle some drops 
 from the fountain of Youth. In the heavy pewter goblet 
 of Jean-le-Bel, the acrid wine has some nameless flavour
 
 MO FROfSSART. 
 
 of blood ; but it is a strengthening beverage, a beverage 
 for rough soldiers and brave and hospitable lords. Canon 
 though he was, Messire Jean-le-Bel had been also in his time 
 a mighty captain before the Lord. He had more than 
 once followed Jean de Beaumont to the field of battle ; 
 he had valiantly gone through the hard campaign in 
 Scotland. At Liege he kept open house for all knights 
 and prelates he himself being as much one as the other. 
 Tall and big, and " personable de riches etoffes," he 
 always wore a knight's dress, ornamented with numerous 
 jewels and precious stones. " On common days of the 
 week he never went to church without sixteen or twenty 
 persons who accompanied him. . . . On festivals (as 
 jours solempnes) he had often as great a rout after him 
 as after the bishop of Liege ; for he would have fifty, or, 
 at the least, forty followers." Thus in his Wallon dialect 
 Jean de Hemricourt describes him to us. All these 
 people dined at his table and dined gaily; Jean-le-Bel, 
 expert in all sports, and in every art practised by a man 
 of breeding, was also past master in every kind of pleasure 
 and amusement. Jean de Hemricourt, who says nothing 
 of his Chroniques, praises greatly his skill in making 
 " lais, chanchons et vierlais." He inherited many rich 
 possessions, and had many years in which to enjoy them ; 
 for he lived his somewhat ostentatious life to the age of 
 eighty-four. In his old age he had two natural sons, to 
 whom he bequeathed great wealth ; the younger, hearty 
 and joyous like his father, become in his turn canon of 
 Liege, and composed a volume of Reveries touchant les 
 Blasons, which has not come down to us.
 
 "LES VRAYES ChRONIQVES." 141 
 
 From this warlike canon Froissart borrows to his profit 
 almost everything except and the exception is curious 
 the descriptions of battles. No one has ever described 
 battles like the peaceable Froissart ; Jean-le-Bel, who 
 knew so well how to handle the sword, is in this respect 
 greatly his inferior. Compare the battle of Crecy, 
 depicted though it was by the canon of Liege from the 
 French, the tragic point of view, compare it with the 
 picture drawn by Froissart on the authority of the English 
 knights. As to the battle of Poitiers, somewhat meagrely 
 described in the Vrayes Chroniques Froissart has made 
 of it a panorama of ininimitable power and life. It is 
 one of the masterpieces of history. 
 
 From the battle of Poitiers onwards, Froissart consults 
 Jean-le-Bel no more. Too young hitherto in age and 
 judgment, he sees henceforward with his own eyes ; he 
 takes his flight. From year to year, in retouching the 
 first chapters of his work, he endeavours to eliminate the 
 passages borrowed from his predecessor. In the redaction 
 of Rome, little remains of the canon of Liege. None the 
 less, it is the first redaction that established the glory of 
 Froissart, it is the first redaction that survives ; without 
 it, indeed, how many imperishable possessions should we 
 not have lost ? Ask any reader to name the finest pages 
 of the Chronicles. Nine times out of ten, he will mention 
 the death of the King of Scotland, the redemption of the 
 burgesses of Calais, the battle of Poitiers, the death of 
 Aymeiigot Marches, and the journey to Beam. But of 
 these five masterpieces the first two are from the iron hand 
 of Jcan-le-Bel.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES. 
 
 A CHRONICLE written down from day to day, compiled 
 on journeys, on the high road or in inns, and on the 
 authority of chance encounters, cannot pretend to the 
 exactitude of a work of learning and research, composed 
 in the leisure of the study. Sir John Froissart, canon 
 of a provincial town, was not a man to trouble himself 
 with diplomatic documents ; he did not even, in record- 
 ing what he heard, wait for his information to be 
 complete. His work was in the nature of a journal, 
 a series of sketches done on the spot, after nature 
 or from hearsay. 
 
 Nevertheless, a hundred, nay, even fifty years ago, 
 it would have been thought strange to throw any doubt 
 on Froissart's authority as an historian. It was the 
 publication in its complete form of the " Chronicle of 
 Charles VI." that first shook his reputation for historical 
 veracity. The Monk of Saint Denis, often better 
 informed, always better balanced in judgment, is too 
 frequently in disagreement with Froissart for our 
 chronicler not to suffer by comparison. Since then 
 the publication of the Chronicle of the four first Valois,
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES. 143 
 
 of the Chronicle of Jean-le-Bel, of different Belgian 
 Chronicles, and, above all, the minute study of various 
 archives, have laid a foundation only too broad and 
 solid for a criticism of Froissart's narrative. The value 
 of his strange geography and fantastic chronology is 
 sufficiently appreciated now ; and the days are distant 
 when genuine scholars a dom Plancher or an Andre 
 du Chesne displayed prodigies of ingenuity in order 
 to reconcile incontestable documents with the statements 
 of their infallible chronicler. Nothing is more instruc- 
 tive than to read certain chapters of Froissart that of 
 the " aatine" (wager) for example, or that of the journey 
 in Languedoc having at hand an itinerary composed in 
 accordance with the accounts of the Duke of Burgundy 
 and the accounts of Orleans. How, for example, give 
 credence to that brief and unexpected dismissal of his 
 uncle of Burgundy by the King, within sight of the 
 gates of Avignon, when we know that at that very 
 moment the Duke was at Arras? So much the worse 
 for the truth ; the eloquent passage remains, and the 
 disgrace of the Duke of Burgundy has passed into 
 history. Or, again, that wild wager between the King 
 and his young brother to ride from Montpellier to Paris 
 in four days. Our itinerary shows us irrefutably 
 that the ride was merely from Mussy 1'Eveque to the 
 capital (a distance of scarcely twenty-two leagues). But 
 what does it matter? The legend of the "aatine" has 
 none the less remained one of the most popular of the 
 life of Charles VI. 
 
 Let us admit that the Chronicles of Froissart abound in
 
 i 4 4 FROfSSART. 
 
 similar fantasies, and that it is always worth while to check 
 them by the documentary evidence of the archives, so 
 abundant, and so easy of access in these days. It is not, 
 therefore, to be supposed that the luminous testimony of 
 the texts will always put the chronicler to confusion. On 
 the contrary, it will increase our admiration for his excellent 
 report of the wars of Spain and Portugal ; it will prove him 
 at least a little more exact than his contemporaries in his 
 narrative of the war in Gascony and the campaigns in 
 Scotland ; and, apart from some few confused details, some 
 incorrect dates, how much valuable information does he 
 not give us in his account of French politics during the last 
 decade of the fourteenth century. 
 
 It is an admission made a little against the inclination 
 of the author of these lines, an inveterate Orleanist .... 
 of five hundred years ago. For Froissart is invariably Bur- 
 gundian, and his appreciation of current events is coloured 
 throughout by party spirit. He has done incalculable 
 harm to the reputation of Louis I., Duke of Orleans, and 
 all that he says concerning that prince is both malicious and 
 perfidious. Froissart, who always reflects in an extra- 
 ordinary degree the opinion of those about him, gives only 
 the odious and distorted picture that the Burgundian party, 
 in the thick of the quarrel, made of the house of Orleans. 
 The ambitious young Duke, almost guilty of fratricide, the 
 Duchess a poisoner of children, the father-in-law a sorcerer 
 all are there ! Such complete malevolence throws 
 suspicion on everything that it dictates. And yet Froissart 
 is not a party man ; he has no definite theory upon the 
 French policy, there is in him almost nothing that recalls
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES. 145 
 
 the temper of mind of a genuine statesman, like Phil- 
 ippe de Commines. If he is Burgundian, it is simply by 
 reason of neighbourhood and geography. The Duke of 
 Burgundy, husband of the heiress of Flanders, and father- 
 in-law to the heirs of Hainault, belonged to the Netherlands 
 no less than to France ; there were a thousand ties between 
 him and the proteg6 of Duke Aubert. William of Hain- 
 ault, Count of Ostrevant, maintained the most intimate 
 relations with his father-in-law of Burgundy, and it was 
 probably through him that Froissart was kept so singularly 
 well informed of all the projects of the court of Dijon. In 
 any case, a minute study of the Chronicles of Froissart is 
 indispensable to any one desiring a clear comprehension of 
 the intrigues of the Duke of Burgundy and the motives by 
 which he was actuated. 
 
 On that side, the Chronicles frequently touch the very 
 core of the history of France. Let us take, for example, 
 what in the fourteenth century was called " la voie de 
 fait " the project of putting an end to the schism, by 
 replacing the antipope Clement VII. in the See of Rome 
 through intervention of the French arms. This vast design, 
 which came to nothing, and which would have changed the 
 face of history for France as well as for the Church this 
 audacious project was at one moment equally dear to the 
 Duke of Orleans and to the Duke of Burgundy. Froissart 
 shows himself well informed in respect of this mysterious 
 affair ; he is acquainted with many details that were kept 
 secret then, and have been brought to light in our time by 
 M. Durrieu and M. Jarry. He suspects the intervention 
 
 of the King of England, who, in fact, brought about the 
 
 P
 
 146 FROISSART. 
 
 miscarriage of this dangerous project. And, above all, he 
 brings us acquainted with the temper of the court at that 
 period the chivalric ardour, the young enthusiasm with 
 which preparations were made for an expedition, political 
 indeed, in its aim, yet, before everything else, a religious 
 war, a crusade. Concerning another affair, of a nature 
 equally secret and delicate, the project of a marriage 
 between the young brother of Charles VI. and the heiress 
 of Hungary, Froissart is singularly well informed. It was 
 probably through Philip of Burgundy, or, at least, through 
 someone forming part of his council, that he gained 
 knowledge of these mysteries. 
 
 But it is above all through his sketches of the men of 
 his time those portraits firm, terse, solid, and vigorously 
 struck off as so many medals of the Renaissance that 
 the past lives again before our eyes. That variety, that 
 inexhaustible vivacity, illuminate history as though with a 
 light from within. What a typical picture of the cruel 
 dishonest agent, domineering and unscrupulous, and yet 
 after his fashion loyal to his master, he gives us in the un- 
 happy B6tisac ! What dignity, worthy of a Vandyck, in his 
 portrait of Gaston Phcebus, Count of Foix ! What shadow 
 and what light in this sketch of the old English general, 
 the brave and churlish Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. 
 
 " My uncle of Gloucester is too dangerous and strange," 
 said King Richard, who in truth had reason to mistrust 
 the terrible old soldier. Could Shakespeare himself have 
 shown us better than our chronicler has done, this violent 
 and choleric soul, this god Mars, as it were, grown old, and 
 tormented by attacks of the gout ?
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES. 147 
 
 " The nobles of France knew that the Duke of Gloucester 
 was proud and hard in all matters of agreement, and 
 showed him therefore all the signs of love and honour that 
 they could. He took indeed all the jewels that they gave 
 him, but ever the root of bitterness remained in his heart. 
 Nor never for anything the French could do, could they 
 soften him, for he remained always fell and cruel in his 
 answers 
 
 " He spoke and said : ' These vapours of Frenchmen be so 
 full of pride and presumption that they can come to no 
 good conclusion of any enterprise they take in hand ! I 
 cannot tell why we should have truce with them ; for if 
 the war were open, we should now make them better war 
 than ever was made before ; for as now all the flower of 
 chivalry of France is either taken or slain (at Nicopolis). 
 And I swear by God, if I may live two year in good health, 
 the war shall be renewed ! I will neither spare for truce, 
 respite, nor assurance, for in time past the Frenchmen have 
 kept no promise with us, but have falsely and craftily taken 
 
 away the heritage of the Duchy of Aquitaine which 
 
 oftentimes I have showed to the council of France, when 
 we met and communed together on the frontier of the 
 marches of Calais ; but always they flourished their intents 
 with so sweet words that mine opinion was not regarded 
 nor believed. Ah, if there were a good head king of 
 England, that desired the war as well as I do, and would 
 recover his heritage, he should find in England a hundred 
 thousand archers and six thousand men of arms ready 
 apparelled to serve him and to pass the sea. But it is not 
 so! There is no such king in England as now that will
 
 148 FROISSART. 
 
 make war. He will not make war. He will not ! He is 
 too heavy : he careth for nothing but meat and drink. . . . 
 This is no life for men of war that will desire to have 
 
 honour by prowess of deeds of arms It was not so 
 
 in the days of good King Edward my father, and in my 
 
 brother's days, the Prince of Wales His people 
 
 compare him with them, which shortly will lead to a 
 rebellion within this realm. There was never so good time 
 to make war in France as now, for he that calleth himself 
 King of France is young, hot, and of great courage and 
 enterprise ; he would surely fight .... what end soever 
 fell thereof. And the people of this country, who love 
 nothing so well as to have battle with those richer than 
 themselves, would fight boldly for so rich and great a spoil, 
 such as in time past our people had in the days of good 
 King Edward my father, and in my brother's days, the 
 Prince of Wales. Still I remember me of the last journey I 
 made into France " 
 
 And the old Duke goes off into interminable reminis- 
 cences of the good time when " the French, who are rich, 
 were pillaged," and not the miserable Irish, " who are a poor 
 and bad people, and have a very poor and uninhabitable 
 country." Alas ! the laurels are faded ! 
 
 This then, is the real value that the Chronicles have 
 for us. We do not deny Froissart such claims as he 
 may have on that fine title of historian that he is so 
 fond of bestowing on himself; but as an historian he is 
 less sagacious than the Monk of Saint Denis, and less 
 exact than the anonymous author of the Chronicles of 
 the Ouatre Valois. It is as a chronicler that he shines
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHRONICLES. 149 
 
 without a rival ; even when we know him to be in flagrant 
 disagreement with the truth, we cannot but delight in 
 his admirable and nai've inventions. And for once that 
 we consult him on the wars of the Peninsula, or the " Voie 
 de Fait," how often do we not read and read again 
 the pages that contain the tirade of Thomas of 
 Gloucester, the game of chess of the beautiful Countess 
 of Salisbury, or that story of the women-fairies of 
 Cephalonia, worthy of being enshrined in one of 
 Shakespeare's comedies : 
 
 The Count of Nevers and the lords of France, returning 
 from Nicopolis, cast anchor in the haven of the Island 
 of Cephalonia " And there landed and found great 
 numbers of ladies and damosels who had the seignory 
 of that isle ; they received the Frenchmen with great 
 joy, and brought them to pass the time about the island, 
 which is right fair and pleasant. And such as know the 
 condition of that isle affirm that the fairies and the 
 nymphs be much conversant there, and that some of 
 the merchants of Venice and Genoa, and of other lands, 
 such as have arrived there, and tarried a season to 
 eschew the danger of the sea, have said that they 
 have seen some of the fairies there, and have proved 
 their words to be true. Right joyously the ladies received 
 the Count of Nevers, and the lords of France . . . because 
 they were noble knights and men of honour, for there 
 not accustomed none other to be conversant among 
 them, but merchants. This isle is not only inhabited by 
 women ; there be also men among them, but the women 
 have the sovereignty and chief rule there ; they are work-
 
 150 FROJSSAHT. 
 
 women in silk work, and make cloths of silk, so subtle and 
 so well that there is none other work like it ; and the men 
 of the island cannot make them, but they carry them out to 
 sea, where they think to have most profit, and the women 
 abide still in the isle. And this isle is of that condition 
 that no man dare approach it to do there any evil, for 
 whosoever doth are perished ; and that hath been seen 
 and proved. And therefore these ladies endure ever in 
 peace and doubt no man ; also they are marvellous sweet, 
 gentle, amiable, and humble : and when they will, they 
 speak with the fairies, and be in their company." 
 
 What purity as of dew lies on these few lines! A 
 page like this, and many others fresh as this, lavishly 
 scattered throughout Froissart's work, is restful as a 
 fairy hand laid on the feverish pulse of our time. These 
 are things that will never lose their value; rather their 
 value increases, for it is in growing old that we perceive 
 .the beauty of the simple freshness of youth. This fresh- 
 ness, this soul, as it were, of a child captivated by the 
 marvellous, Froissart possessed in perfection ; and at the 
 same time, the clearest vision, the keenest ear, the most 
 just and discerning mind. His greatest fault and the 
 fault is one that stamps him a poet is, that in contem- 
 plating the drama of life he did not perceive the truth, and 
 the truth only ; but that his Chronicles reflect the world 
 as it is seen at twenty more living, more beautiful, more 
 ugly, more varied half a reality, and half a dream. 
 
 THE END.