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Updated: June 24, 2025
Each night saw its Royal debauch, with the King and his mistress for arch-spirits of the revels. There were nightly banquets, with the rarest wines and the most costly viands, supplemented by salads prepared by the dainty hands of Mademoiselle de Charolois, and ragouts cooked by Louis himself in silver saucepans.
He drew forth a scroll from his bosom, and read as follows: "Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, 'Pasque Dieu, my Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count Charolois declares he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your ambassage.
"And here, then," said Edward, as he put his lips to a gold goblet, wrought with gems, and passed it to Anthony the Bastard, "here, count, we take the first wassail to the loves of Charolois and Margaret!" The count drained the goblet, and the wine gave him new fire. "And with those loves, king," said he, "we bind forever Burgundy and England. Woe to France!"
Again Margaret's fair brow lowered, and the duchess hastened to answer, "The disputes between princes, young man, can never be rightly understood by such as thou and thy friends. The Count of Charolois is a noble gentleman; and fire in youth will break out. Richard the Lion Hearted of England was not less puissant a king for the troubles he occasioned to his sire when prince."
But although one lady after another, from that most bewitching of madcaps, Mademoiselle de Charolois, to the dark-eyed, buxom Comtesse de Toulouse, practised on him all their allurements, strove to awake his senses "by a thousand coquetries, a thousand assaults, the King's timidity eluded these advances, which amused and alarmed, but did not tempt his heart; that young monarch's heart was still so full of the aged Fleury's terrifying tales of the women of the Regency."
But she the poor maiden she looked so haughty and so happy. This is early May; will she wear that look when the autumn leaves are strewn?" And now the one topic at the court of King Edward IV. was the expected arrival of Anthony of Burgundy, Count de la Roche, bastard brother of Charolois, afterwards, as Duke of Burgundy, so famous as Charles the Bold.
But an' the Lord Warwick had sought alliance with the Count of Charolois, would there have been brighter bonfires than ye will see in Smithfield, when ye hear that business with the Flemings is surrendered for fine words from King Louis the Cunning?"
On the morning after the meeting of Lady Imogene with Lord Branchimont at the shrine of Charolois, she was summoned to the presence of her father, and, after having been loaded with every species of reproach and invective for her clandestine meeting with their hereditary foe, she was confined to a chamber in one of the loftiest towers of the castle, which she was never permitted to quit, except to walk in a long gloomy gallery with an old female servant remarkable for the acerbity of her mind and manners.
"A sail, Nicholas! a sail bound to England! Know that the Count of Charolois has permitted Sir Anthony Count de la Roche, his bastard brother, to come over to London, to cross lances with our own Sir Anthony Lord Scales. It is an old challenge, and right royally will the encounter be held." "Um!" muttered Alwyn, "this bastard, then, is the carrier pigeon.
"But the very moment that Warwick is negotiating with Louis of France, this interchange of courtesies with Louis's deadly foe, the Count of Charolois, is out of season." "Nay, take it not so gravely, a mere pastime." "Hastings, thou knowest better. But thou art no friend of my great brother." "Small cause have I to be so," answered Hastings, with a quivering lip.
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