The king, who loved her dearly, for in his heaviest sickness she had been his tender nurse, promised, indeed, all she required; but, alas! he had no power to perform it. Of himself he had no authority. The party of the Duke of Orleans had now no leader; and the Dukes of Berri and Bourbon, and others who had hitherto acted with Burgundy, although disgusted with his conduct, hesitated to abandon him.

The Duke of Burgundy took advantage of this, collected a large body of troops, marched to Paris, got the king and his eldest son into his power, and then, on the 8th of March, 1408, before Louis, Duke of Aquitaine, the king's eldest son, who is styled the Dauphin; the King of Sicily; the Cardinal de Bar; the Dukes of Berri, Brittany, and Loraine; and many earls, barons, knights, and squires of different countries; the Rector of the University,

accompanied by a great many doctors and other clerks; and a numerous body of the citizens of Paris, and people of all ranks, he caused Master John Petit, a doctor in theology, whom he had brought with him, to pronounce a long speech, in which he accused the Duke of Orleans of many crimes he had never committed, especially of endeavouring to cause the king's death by witchcraft, (a crime which he had before endeavoured to fix on the innocent Duchess of Orleans,) and argued, that as the Duke of Orleans had been a traitor, it was a good deed to kill him; and, therefore, he was deserving of praise, not blame, for what he had done. The speech was full of allusions to circumstances related in Scripture, which were most wickedly turned from their true sense to justify the crime the Duke of Burgundy had committed. Although nobody could be convinced by such

weak arguments, and none of the accusations against the Duke of Orleans could be proved, yet many thought there might be something in them, and began to doubt; and such was the duke's power, nobody dared to gainsay him. Deeds of violence were so usual in that unhappy time, that even the murder of a king's brother was not regarded with that horror with which we look upon that of the meanest or most worthless individual. The Parisians, who had never been friendly to the Duke of Orleans, welcomed his murderer with shouts of joy, and even the little children sung carols in his praise about the streets. He, however, having set the example of murder, did not feel himself quite safe: he went constantly armed, and was always accompanied by a train of armed men; and, to ensure his security, he caused a stone tower to be constructed, to which he