NOTES NOT USED BY MY FATHER.

'A truth it is that Charles the Well-beloved, son of King Charles V., began to reign and was crowned at Rheims on the Sunday before the Feast of All Saints, in the year of grace one thousand three hundred and eighty, and was then but fourteen years of age, and right grandly did rule his kingdom; and at the commencement of his reign by advice of his noble Council he undertook many fair voyages, wherein he comported himself according to his youth, with prudence and valour enough. In Flanders he gained the battle of Rosbecque, by which he reduced the Flemings to his obedience and overcame the Duke of Gueldres, and also collected a great host wherewith to pass into England, making himself by such enterprises much to be dreaded by all persons who heard of him. But fortune which turns against those in high places, as well as those of mean estate, showed her fickleness towards King Charles, for as he was coming in the year thirteen hundred and ninety-two to his city of Mans, with intent of passing from thence into Brittany, and punishing the Duke of Brittany for giving shelter to Messire Peter de Craon, who wickedly attacked and waylaid Messire Oliver de Clisson, a most piteous adventure befell the King, and one which brought the greatest sufferings upon his kingdom.'

After commencing his chronicle in this way, Monstrelet proceeds to describe the sudden madness which fell upon Charles, which threw the government of his kingdom into the hands of the princes of the blood royal. And as we shall have much to say in this history with regard to this unhappy Charles the Well-beloved, and of the reasons wherefore during his reign the lords of the royal family were at strife, it will be as well to set down their names here, before we come to the facts of their history.

The kingdom of France during this monarch's illness was governed by a Council of which the nominal head was his Queen.

Isabella of Bavaria brought the king three sons and five daughters. The first son, called the Duke of Acquitaine, married a daughter of Philip Duke of Burgundy, his father's uncle, and died without issue. The second son, John Duke of Touraine, married Jacqueline, daughter of the Count of Hainault. The third son is known in history as Charles VII. the Victorious.

Of the daughters, the eldest, Isabella, married first King Richard

of England, and at his death the Duke of Orleans. Michelle married Philip Duke of Burgundy; Jeanne, the Duke of Bretagne; Marie was a nun at Poissy, and Catherine finally married Henry V.

Besides the Queen in the Council was the King's uncle, the Duke of Berry, the only surviving brother of Charles V., who had been a member of the Regency during his nephew's minority, and Louis Duke of Bourbon, the King's maternal uncle. With them sate the Duke of Orleans, the King's brother, the Duke of Burgundy his cousin, with the Count of Nevers, and the Duke of Limbourg, his brothers, the King of Navarre, the King of Sicily, certain other great lords of the royal blood, and some of the chief officers of the State.

During Charles's minority, and afterwards during his illness, every one of these great lords, his relatives, was at strife with the rest, conspiring with one another against one another, making treaties and breaking them at convenience, and not often hesitating at murder when the opportunity fell in their way. Collectively and individually they were occupied in robbing the country; and as to do so it seemed necessary that they should have the formality of the King's signature to their acts, the object of each party was to seize and keep possession of the Sovereign as long as he might. The Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans were the most powerful lords of the family, and gradually the other princes joined one or the other's faction. As they had adherents in all parts of France, in all parts plunder took place, and from Bordeaux to Calais the fair realm of France was a scene of civil war. Ah! famous times were those for brave knights and warriors, and such as in our economical days are scarce likely to return..

There were so many lords governing France at the time, and the claims of each were so various and so complicated, that it is no wonder mistakes were made, and parties continually plundered and robbed by Burgundy's men, by Orleans' men, by the King of Navarre's people, by the followers of the rival Dukes of Brittany, by the English English, by the Calais English, by the Gascon English, by the Free Companies that wandered through the country and served anybody or nobody, or by the men in the pay of the chief towns who had guards, captains, and immunities of their own, that were, of course, to be supported. Through the hands of all these passed poor Jacque Bonhomme. So much for his politics. As to his religion, there were, during the period of this tale, always two, and once three, Popes, who each expected his

absolute obedience, and excommunicated him if he refused it. Gunpowder had not blown chivalry out of the world as yet, and the latter, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, may be considered to have reached its highest pitch of glory. What Englishman is there that does not kindle at the name of Harry V. and love to think of the great victory he won on the Feast of Crispin Crispinian? Harry at this time was not the great conqueror that he was destined to be. His father and he had enough to do to keep their own (as they called it), and were fighting for their lives on the Scotch borders or the Welsh Marches with Hotspur and Owen Glendower.

The picture with which we would end this fragment is, perhaps, a peaceful foreshadowing of Franck de Borsellen's future life on earth, or is it only a memorial design? A distant Heaven seemed nearer then, than now, in men's daily thoughts. Now even Heaven is sought for here, by many who leave the hereafter to the Great Dispensation.

THACKERAY AND HIS FATHER'S FAMILY.1

BY MRS. WARRE CORNISH.

THE present writer cannot have been very old when she first remembers Mr. Thackeray in Paris, because when he offered her his arm on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and said they would be taken for husband and wife, she felt sorry that French people should see such a tall stately Englishman mated to such an insignificant little wife. Her hand went straight up from the shoulder to rest upon his arm, Aunts were left behind, the green Boulevard trees stretched before, the stroll seemed long with gay vistas. It cannot, however, have extended far, for there was a halt before the windows of the famous confiseur, Boissier, on the next Boulevard-named des Capucines. Boissier's boxes lay on a line with her eyes, and in the boxes were the bonbons in patterns. 'Don't you wish for that lovely blue box full of chocolates?' 'Oh yes!

I recall my confusion still when Mr. Thackeray dived into the shop, paid many francs, and ordered the large box to be sent home, as the result of my indiscreet exclamation.

After this, adoration passed all bounds. There is a straightbacked arm-chair of the Louis Philippe period in my possession, with cushioned arms on which I used to perch beside my grandmother, Mrs. Ritchie, who was the great novelist's aunt. In that Grandmother's chair' now sat Mr. Thackeray, very fresh, very wise-looking behind his spectacles, very attractive with his thick curling hair and rosy cheeks. There was an element of mystery about him fascinating even to childhood. He always seemed alone. He had just been in America. He was on his way to Rome. He was meteoric. He was exceedingly sad and silent. He was wondrously droll. Above all, he was kind, so that the child perched beside him questioned him :

Is you good?' (from the perch).

'Not so good as I should like to be' (from Mr. Thackeray). Is you clever?'

'Well, I've written a book or two. Perhaps I am rather clever.'

1 Copyright, 1911, by Smith, Elder. & Co., in the United States of America.

'Is you pretty?

'Oh! no, no, no! No! No! No!' (I recall Mr. Thackeray bursting out laughing.)

'I think you's good, and you's clever, and you's pretty.'

Thackeray and childhood are linked wherever" The Rose and the Ring" is read in English nurseries and schoolrooms. It was to be drawn and written in Rome for Edith Story (Countess Peruzzi) the following New Year. At the time of which I write pictures were drawn for us Indian children in Paris. The occult Morale of Fairy Blackstick was somehow impersonated by Mr. Thackeray in these pencil sketches, though to be sure he dealt poetic justice with his pencil, only in humorous moral to small heroines in well-appointed nurseries. In one of these faded sketches he appears above the steam of the evening tub looking gravely through his spectacles across a column of vapour to repress an uproar. In a pen-and-ink sketch of that time in my possession, a radiant little girl who is a foretaste of Betsinda and a lank-haired child in a shawl inhabit one slum. But she with the curls had secured a basket and a parasol. And she rides in the basket like any Park beauty, and holds her parasol aslant and knows her own dignity. And the other is the more wretched, and she carries a thin baby and a jug to the publichouse. And in this study of temperaments we feel that when the child with the shawl is a grown woman she never will keep her eyes from envying a rival's happiness.

The moral conflict of everyday life, whether of rich or poor, of man or child, was never far from Thackeray's thoughts. And he ever seemed to remember not to judge lest we be judged. Once, on a later visit to Paris, naughtiness in the schoolroom, bewildering element to the culprit, was punished. A German tree' party was prohibited at Christmas time. Mr. Thackeray called and was told. A kind Aunt, conscious of over-severity, meant him to beg the prisoner off. But there was awful silence from the straight-backed chair. The world seemed to be coming to an end; the silence was felt by Aunt and niece. Grave Mr. Thackeray did not ask for another chance. But something was said about the necessity for discipline, and he spoke without a smile :

'I know some folks who were naughty when they were young and are good now.'

Did he mean himself? Something in his manner suggested

VOL. XXXI-NO. 181. N.S.

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