It was this feeling which brought him at last,
a poor, purblind blue-bottle of the later autumn, into
collision with "the universal spider," Louis XI. He took up
the defence of the Duke of Brittany at Tours. But Louis was
then in no humour to hear Charles's texts and Latin
sentiments; he had his back to the wall, the future of France
was at stake; and if all the old men in the world had crossed
his path, they would have had the rough side of his tongue
like Charles of Orleans. I have found nowhere what he said,
but it seems it was monstrously to the point, and so rudely
conceived that the old duke never recovered the indignity.
He got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and died two days
after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
And so a whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of
melodious rondels to the end of time.
V.
The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece
throughout. He never succeeded in any single purpose he set
before him; for his deliverance from England, after twenty-
five years of failure and at the cost of dignity and
consistency, it would be ridiculously hyperbolical to treat
as a success. During the first part of his life he was the
stalking horse of Bernard d'Armagnac; during the second, he
was the passive instrument of English diplomatists; and
before he was well entered on the third, he hastened to
become the dupe and catspaw of Burgundian treason.
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