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For a time she was treated with great attention, and child as she was, received all the homage which the courtiers were accustomed to pay to the Queen of France. But amidst the intrigues of the times a change arose, and it was deemed a matter of state policy to marry the boy-king to another princess.

The weakling boy-king Charles was a degenerate of the worst type, the result of a long series of intermarriages; and so long as Mariana could keep him within her own control, it was difficult to question her authority to do as she pleased.

The enlightened clergy and doctors, lay and spiritual, who formed the body known as the University of Paris, preferred that Joan of Arc should be sent to the capital, there to undergo her trial, and wrote to this effect to Bedford, through the name of the boy-king.

And still the boy-king, emulating the example of his royal parent, remained immobile, with closed eyes and steady breathing, as though his rest had remained unbroken by the incursion of his rebellious subjects. In those days and at that court falsehood was deemed an indispensable part of diplomacy.

Henry had himself provided them with a ready instrument to execute their vengeance, and the boy-king, consecrated scarcely six months ago, and already urged to revolt by his mother and the king of France, was only too willing to hear the tale of their accumulated wrongs and discontents. All Christendom had been watching the strife; all Christendom was outraged at its close.