Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
to remember his happiness over there in the past ;
and he was both sad and merry at the recollection,
and could not have his fill of gazing on the shoi-es
of France.^ Although guilty of unpatriotic acts,
he had never been exactly unpatriotic in feeling.
But his sojourn in England gave, for the time at
least, some consistency to what had been a very
weak and ineffectual prejudice. He must have been
under the influence of more than usually solemn
considerations, when he proceeded to turn Henry's
puritanical homily after Agin court into a ballade,
and reproach France, and himself by implication,
with pride, gluttony, idleness, unbridled covetous-
ness, and sensuality.^ For the moment, he must
really have been thinking more of France than of
Charles of Orleans.
And another lesson he learned. He who was
only to be released in case of peace begins to think
upon the disadvantages of war. ' Pray for peace,'
is his refrain : a strange enough subject for the ally
of Bernard d'Armagnac.^ But this lesson was plain
and practical ; it had one side in particular that
was specially attractive for Charles, and he did not
hesitate to explain it in so many words. ' Every-
body,' he writes — I translate roughly-—' everybody
should be much inclined to peace, for everybody has
a deal to gain by it.' ^
Charles made laudable endeavours to acquire
English, and even learned to write a rondel in that
1 Works (ed. d'Hericault;, i. 143. ^ /j,-^ 190.
3 Ibid. 144. * Ibid. 158.
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