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

CHARLES OF ORLEANS
judges a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans
was beloved of God.^
Alas ! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles
returned to France. He was nearly fifty years
old. Many changes had been accomplished since,
at twenty-three, he was taken on the field of Agin-
court. But of all these he was profoundly ignorant,
or had only heard of them in the discoloured reports
of Philip of Burgundy. He had the ideas of a
former generation, and sought to correct them by
the scandal of a factious party. With such quahfi-
cations he came back eager for the domination, the
pleasures, and the display that befitted his princely
birth. A long disuse of all political activity com-
bined with the flatteries of his new friends to fill
him with an overweening conceit of his own capacity
and influence. If aught had gone wrong in his
absence, it seemed quite natural men should look
to him for its redress. Was not King Arthur come
again ?
The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic
honours. He took his guest by his foible for
pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his
own ; and Charles walked right out of prison into
much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and beU-
rinsfinff as he had left behind when he went in.
Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married
to Mary of Cleves, at St. Omer. The marriage
was celebrated with the usual pomp of the Bur-
gundian court ; there were joustings and illumina-
^ Froces de Jeanne d' Arc, i. 133-55.
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