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Updated: May 4, 2025
The belief expressed several times by Commines that God troubled Charles's understanding out of very pity for France, was a current rumour. At the end of April an English embassy arrived at the camp, which was kept in a marvellous state of luxury, even though disease was not successfully curbed in the ranks.
"A truth!" cried Commines, catching at the phrase he waited for. "Stephen, Stephen, all along I warned you she was dangerous." "Very dangerous," said Villon, "I have felt it myself. No man is safe. In '57 or was it '58? there was just such another. Her mother kept the little wine shop at the corner of " "Take care, sot, it is the King you trifle with, not me. You said Saxe had told the truth."
It was an exceeding bitter cry, and the pain of it pierced through even Commines' armour of calmness. But Villon, though he shivered a little, only shook his head. His face, dimly seen, was full of a grave concern. "Some one has spoken to Saxe," he said. "Hugues or another. I know Saxe well, he has not brains enough to imagine so great a truth."
Both these classes of men, despots and feudal nobles, had a wide field for their ambition among the necessarily dissolved civic institutions; and their easy success contributed to confirm the general tendency of the day to say with Commines, "Qui a le succès a l'honneur," and to confound these two words and ideas.
Else Commines, Beaujeu, and these others would say I fostered with my hand what I condemned with my head. No, the father's hand must be hidden out of sight, and that will be your part."
His forethought must have run somewhat thus. Lessaix knows that Monsieur de Commines is expected any moment and is to go at once to the King, who waits for him; Monsieur de Commines does not appear, but remains paying his court to the Dauphin at Amboise. The inference would be clear to all men, and Monsieur de Commines would be ruined outright and utterly discredited.
De Commines tells us that the cage invented by Cardinal Balue, and in which he languished for eleven years, was narrower still. An average sized man could not stand therein upright. The bolts and bars are still in perfect order. Nothing more brings home to us the abomination of the whole thing than to see the official draw these Brobdingnagian bolts and turn these gigantic keys.
It is to be noted by the student of the ways of men that he never gave the Dauphin's safety a thought. He had risked his life for the boy, and would risk it again if necessary, risk it cheerfully, but as an abstract proposition he cared little whether the Dauphin lived or died. Next after Ursula came Commines.
Rising, he paced up the gallery, his head bent, his iron-shod stick striking the flags with a clang as he leaned upon it at every second step, the crumpled paper still caught in his hand. At the door he paused, looking up sideways. "Commines? Where is Commines? Head of God! is there no one to bring me Commines?" "We have sent for him, sire." "Sent for him? Why is he not here when I need him?
And the King blew out his thin lips in contempt. "To bind men to you, Commines, to bind them so that you may sleep easy o' nights, you must hold them either by the fear of to-day or the hope of to-morrow. Gratitude! Thanks for eaten bread! How many are there who owe me everything, and yet have turned against me. But let that pass; may God and the Saints forgive them as I do."
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