But we have portraits of all sorts of men, from august Caesar
to the king's dwarf; and all sorts of portraits, from a
Titian treasured in the Louvre to a profile over the grocer's
chimney shelf. And so in a less degree, but no less truly,
than the spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful
Essays, that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old
songs and old account-books; and it is still in the choice of
the reader to make this duke's acquaintance, and, if their
humours suit, become his friend.
I.
His birth - if we are to argue from a man's parents - was
above his merit. It is not merely that he was the grandson
of one king, the father of another, and the uncle of a third;
but something more specious was to be looked for from the son
of his father, Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans, brother to
the mad king Charles VI., lover of Queen Isabel, and the
leading patron of art and one of the leading politicians in
France. And the poet might have inherited yet higher virtues
from his mother, Valentina of Milan, a very pathetic figure
of the age, the faithful wife of an unfaithful husband, and
the friend of a most unhappy king. The father, beautiful,
eloquent, and accomplished, exercised a strange fascination
over his contemporaries; and among those who dip nowadays
into the annals of the time there are not many - and these
few are little to be envied - who can resist the fascination
of the mother.
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