Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, would set to
work on the same refrain, the same idea, or in the same
macaronic jargon. Some of the poetasters were heavy enough;
others were not wanting in address; and the duchess herself
was among those who most excelled. On one occasion eleven
competitors made a ballade on the idea,
"I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge"
(Je meurs de soif empres de la fontaine).
These eleven ballades still exist; and one of them arrests
the attention rather from the name of the author than from
any special merit in itself. It purports to be the work of
Francois Villon; and so far as a foreigner can judge (which
is indeed a small way), it may very well be his. Nay, and if
any one thing is more probable than another, in the great
TABULA RASA, or unknown land, which we are fain to call the
biography of Villon, it seems probable enough that he may
have gone upon a visit to Charles of Orleans. Where Master
Baudet Harenc, of Chalons, found a sympathetic, or perhaps a
derisive audience (for who can tell nowadays the degree of
Baudet's excellence in his art?), favour would not be wanting
for the greatest ballade-maker of all time. Great as would
seem the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own a
sort of kinship with ragged singers, and whimsically regard
himself as one of the confraternity of poets.
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