Resignation may follow after a
reasonable time upon despair; but if a man is persecuted by a
series of brief and irritating hopes, his mind no more
attains to a settled frame of resolution, than his eye would
grow familiar with a night of thunder and lightning. Years
after, when he was speaking at the trial of that Duke of
Alencon, who began life so hopefully as the boyish favourite
of Joan of Arc, he sought to prove that captivity was a
harder punishment than death. "For I have had experience
myself," he said; "and in my prison of England, for the
weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I
have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle where
they took me." (3) This is a flourish, if you will, but it
is something more. His spirit would sometimes rise up in a
fine anger against the petty desires and contrarieties of
life. He would compare his own condition with the quiet and
dignified estate of the dead; and aspire to lie among his
comrades on the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to
have the wings of a dove and dwell in the uttermost parts of
the sea. But such high thoughts came to Charles only in a
flash.
(1) M. Champollion-Figeac gives many in his editions of
Charles's works, most (as I should think) of very doubtful
authenticity, or worse.
(2) Rymer, x. 564. D'Hericault's MEMOIR, p.
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