A great-hearted girl and a poor-hearted boy
made, the one her last, the other his first appearance on the
public stage of that unhappy country. On the 30th of May the
ashes of Joan of Arc were thrown into the Seine, and on the
2d of December our Henry Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally
enough into disaffected and depopulating Paris. Sword and
fire still ravaged the open country. On a single April
Saturday twelve hundred persons, besides children, made their
escape out of the starving capital. The hangman, as is not
uninteresting to note in connection with Master Francis, was
kept hard at work in 1431; on the last of April and on the
4th of May alone, sixty-two bandits swung from Paris gibbets.
(1) A more confused or troublous time it would have been
difficult to select for a start in life. Not even a man's
nationality was certain; for the people of Paris there was no
such thing as a Frenchman. The English were the English
indeed, but the French were only the Armagnacs, whom, with
Joan of Arc at their head, they had beaten back from under
their ramparts not two years before. Such public sentiment
as they had centred about their dear Duke of Burgundy, and
the dear Duke had no more urgent business than to keep out of
their neighbourhood. . . . At least, and whether he liked it
or not, our disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled
as a subject of the English crown.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211