" (2) One day, at "Dover-on-the-Sea," he looked
across the straits, and saw the sandhills about Calais. And
it happened to him, he tells us in a ballade, 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 shores of France. (3) 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 Agincourt into a
ballade, and reproach France, and himself by implication,
with pride, gluttony, idleness, unbridled covetousness, and
sensuality. (4) For the moment, he must really have been
thinking more of France than of Charles of Orleans.
(1) DEBATE BETWEEN THE HERALDS.
(2) Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 43.
(3) IBID. 143.
(4) Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 190.
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.
(1) 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.
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