He had written (in earlier days,
we may presume) a bright and defiant little poem in praise of
solitude. If they would but leave him alone with his own
thoughts and happy recollections, he declared it was beyond
the power of melancholy to affect him. But now, when his
animal strength has so much declined that he sings the
discomforts of winter instead of the inspirations of spring,
and he has no longer any appetite for life, he confesses he
is wretched when alone, and, to keep his mind from grievous
thoughts, he must have many people around him, laughing,
talking, and singing. (1)
(1) Works, ii. 57, 258.
While Charles was thus falling into years, the order of
things, of which he was the outcome and ornament, was growing
old along with him. The semi-royalty of the princes of the
blood was already a thing of the past; and when Charles VII.
was gathered to his fathers, a new king reigned in France,
who seemed every way the opposite of royal. Louis XI. had
aims that were incomprehensible, and virtues that were
inconceivable to his contemporaries. But his contemporaries
were able enough to appreciate his sordid exterior, and his
cruel and treacherous spirit. To the whole nobility of
France he was a fatal and unreasonable phenomenon. All such
courts as that of Charles at Blois, or his friend Rene's in
Provence, would soon be made impossible; interference was the
order of the day; hunting was already abolished; and who
should say what was to go next? Louis, in fact, must have
appeared to Charles primarily in the light of a kill-joy.
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