For I have given here my full consent

To undeck the pompous body of a king,

Make glory base, and sovereignty a slave,

Proud Majesty a subject, state a peasant.

Richard II.

The next day opened a grave scene. King Rene had not forgotten to arrange the pleasures of the day, when, to his horror and discomfiture, Margaret demanded an interview upon serious business. If there was a proposition in the world which Rene from his soul detested, it was any that related to the very name of business.

“What was it that his child wanted?” he said. “Was it money? He would give her whatever ready sums he had, though he owned his exchequer was somewhat bare; yet he had received his income for the season. It was ten thousand crowns. How much should he desire to be paid to her? — the half-three parts — or the whole? All was at her command.”

“Alas, my dear father,” said Margaret, “it is not rily affairs, but your own, on which I desire to speak with you.”

“If the affairs are mine,” said Rene, “I am surly master to put them off to another day — to some rainy dull day, fit for no better purpose. See, my love, the hawking party are all on their steeds and ready — the horses are neighing and pawing — the gallants and maidens mounted, and ready with hawk on fist — the spaniels struggling in the leash. It were a sin, with wind and weather to friend, to lose so lovely a morning.”

“Let them ride their way,” said Queen Margaret, “and find their sport; for the matter I have to speak concerning involves honor and rank, life and means of living.”

“Nay, but I have to hear and judge between Calezon and John of Acqua Mortis, the two most celebrated Troubadours.”

“Postpone their cause till to-morrow,” said Margaret, “and dedicate an hour or two to more important affairs.”

“If you are peremptory,” replied King Rene, “you are aware, my child, I cannot say you nay.”

And with reluctance he gave orders for the hawkers to go on and follow their sport, as he could not attend them that day.

The old King then suffered himself, like an unwilling gray-hound withheld from the chase, to be led into a separate apartment. To ensure privacy, Margaret stationed her secretary, Mordaunt, with Arthur, in an ante-chamber, giving them orders to prevent all intrusion.

“Nay, for myself, Margaret,” said the, good-natured old man, “since it must be, I consent to be put au secret; but why keep old Mordaunt from taking a walk in this beautiful morning; and why prevent young Arthur from going forth with the rest? I promise you, though they term him a philosopher, yet he showed as light a pair of heels last night with the young Countess de Boisgelin, as any gallant in Provence.”

“They are come from a country,” said Margaret, “in which men are trained from infancy to prefer their duty to their pleasure.”

The poor King, led into the council-closet, saw, with internal shuddering, the fatal cabinet of ebony, bound with silver, which had never been opened but to overwhelm him with weariness, and dolefully calculated how many yawns he must strangle ere he sustained the consideration of its contents. They proved, however, when laid before him, of a kind that excited even his interest, though painfully.

His daughter presented him with a short and clear view of the debts which were secured on his dominions, and for which they were mortgaged in various pieces and parcels. She then showed him, by another schedule, the large claims of which payment was instantly demanded, to discharge which no funds could be found or assigned. The King defended himself like others in his forlorn situation. To every claim of six, seven, or eight thousand ducats, he replied by the assertion, that he had ten thousand crowns in his chancery, and showed some reluctance to be convinced, till repeatedly urged upon him, that the same sum could not be adequate to the discharge of thirty times the amount.

“Then,” said the King, somewhat impatiently, “why not pay off those who are most pressing, and let the others wait till receipts come round?”

“It is a practice which has been too often resorted to,” replied the Queen, “and it is but a part of honesty to pay creditors who have advanced their all in your Grace’s service.”

“But are we not,” said Rene, “King of both the Sicilies, Naples, Arragon, and Jerusalem? And why is the monarch of such fair kingdoms to be pushed to the wall, like a bankrupt yeoman, for a few bags of paltry crowns?”

“You are indeed monarch of these kingdoms,” said Margaret; “but is it necessary to remind your Majesty that it is but as I am Queen of England, in which I have not an acre of land, and cannot command a penny of revenue? You have no dominions which are a source of revenue, save those which you see in this scroll, with an exact list of the income they afford. It is totally inadequate, you see, to maintain your state and to pay the large engagements incurred to former creditors.”

“It is cruel to press me to the wall thus,” said the poor King. “What can I do? If I am poor, I cannot help it. I am sure I would pay the debts you talk of, if I knew the way.”

“Royal father, I will show it you. — Resign your useless and unavailing dignity, which, with the pretensions attending it, serves but to make your miseries ridiculous. Resign your rights as a sovereign, and the income which cannot be stretched out to the empty excesses of a beggarly court, will enable you — to enjoy, in ease and opulence, all the pleasures you most delight in as a private baron.”

“Margaret, you speak folly,” answered Rene somewhat sternly. “A king and his people are bound by ties which neither can sever without guilt. My subjects are my flock, I am their shepherd. They are assigned to my governance by Heaven, and I dare not renounce the charge of protecting them.”

“Were you in condition to do so,” answered the Queen, “Margaret would bid you fight to the death. But don your harness, long disused — mount your war-steed — cry, Rene for Provence! and see if a hundred men will gather round your standard. Your fortresses are in the hands of strangers; arms you have none; your vassals may have good-will, but they lack all military skill and soldier-like discipline. You stand but thc mere skeleton of monarchy, which France or Burgundy may prostrate on the earth, whichever first puts forth his arm to throw it down.”

The tears trickled fast down the old King’s cheeks, when this unflattering prospect was set before him, and he could not forbear owning his total want of power to defend himself, and hi~ dominions, and admitting that he had often thought of the necessity of compounding for his resignation with one of his powerful neighbors.

“It was thy interest, Margaret, harsh and severe as you are, which prevented my entering, before now, into measures most painful to my feelings, but perhaps best calculated for my advantage. But I had hoped it would hold on for my day; and thou, my child, with the talents Heaven has given thee, wouldst, I thought, have found remedy for distresses, which I cannot escape, otherwise than by shunning the thoughts of them.”

“If it is in earnest you speak of my interest,” said Margaret, “know, that your resigning Provence will satisfy the nearest, and almost the only wish that my bosom can form; but, so judge me Heaven, as it is on your account, gracious sire, as well as mine, that I advise your compliance.”

“Say no more on’t, child; give me the parchment of resignation, and I will sign it: I see thou hast it ready drawn; let us sign it, and then we will overtake the hawkers. We must suffer woe, but there is little need to sit down and weep for it.”

“Do you not ask,” said Margaret, surprised at his apathy, “to whom you cede your dominions?”

“What boots it,” answered the King, “since they must be no more my own? It must be either to Charles of Burgundy, or my nephew Louis — both powerful and politic princes. God send my poor people may have no cause to wish their old man back again, whose only pleasure was to see them happy and mirthful.”

“It is to Burgundy you resign Provence,” said Margaret.

“I would have preferred him,” answered Rene; “he is fierce, but not malignant. One word more — are my subjects privileges and immunities fully secured?”

“Amply,” replied the Queen; “and your own wants of all kinds honorary provided for. I would not leave the stipulations in your favor in blank, though I might perhaps have trusted Charles of Burgundy, where money alone is concerned.”

“I ask not for myself — with my viol and my pencil, Rene the Troubadour will be as happy as ever was Rene the King.”

So saying, with practical philosophy he whistled the burden of his last composed ariette, and signed away the rest of his royal possessions without pulling off his glove, or even reading the instrument.

“What is this?” he said, looking at another and separate parchment of much briefer contents. “Must my kinsman Charles have both the Sicilies, Catalonia, Naples, and Jerusalem, as well as the poor remainder of Provence? Methinks, ill decency, some greater extent of parchment should have been allowed to so ample accession.”

“That deed,” said Margaret, “only disowns and relinquishes all countenance of Ferrand de Vaudemont’s rash attempt or Lorraine, and renounces all quarrel on that account against Charles of Burgundy.”

For once Margaret miscalculated the tractability of her father’s temper. Rene positively started, colored, and stammered with passion, as he interrupted her. — “Only disown only relinquish — only renounce the cause of my grandchild, the son of my dear Yolande — his rightful claims on his mother’s inheritance! — Margaret, I am ashamed for thee. Thy pride is an excuse for thy evil temper; but what is pride worth which can stoop to commit an act of dishonorable meanness? To desert, nay disown, my own flesh and blood, because the youth is a bold knight under shield, and disposed to battle for his right — I were worthy that harp and horn rung Out shame on me, should I listen to thee.”

Margaret was overcome in some measure by the old man’s unexpected opposition. She endeavored, however, to show that there was no occasion, in point of honor, why Rene should engage in the cause of a wild adventurer, whose right, be it good be it bad, was only upheld by some petty and underhand supplies of money from France, and the countenance of a few of the restless banditti who inhabit the borders of all nations. But ere Rene could answer, voices, raised to an unusual pitch, were heard in the antechamber, the door of which was flung open by an armed knight, covered with dust, who exhibited all the marks of a long journey.

“Here I am,” he said, “father of my mother-behold your grandson — Ferrand de Vaudemont; the son of your lost Yolande kneels at your feet, and implores a blessing on him and his enterprise.”

“Thou hast it,” replied Rene “and may it prosper with thee, gallant youth, im age of thy sainted mother — my blessings my prayers, my hopes, go with you!”

“And you, fair aunt of England,” said the young knight addressing Margaret, “you who are yourself dispossessed by traitors, will you not own the cause of a kinsman who is struggling for his inheritance?”

I wish all good to your person, fair nephew,” answered the Queen of England, “although your features are strange to me. But to advise this old man to adopt your cause, when it is desperate in the eyes of all wise men, were impious madness.”

“Is my cause then so desperate?” said Ferrand “forgive me if I was not aware of it. And does my aunt Margaret say this, whose strength of mind supported Lancaster so long, after the spirits of her warriors had been quelled by defeat? What — forgive me, for my cause must be pleaded — what would you have said had my mother Volande been capable to advise her father to disown your own Edward, had God permitted him to reach Provence in safety?”

“Edward,” said Margaret, weeping as she spoke, “was incapable of desiring his friends to espouse a quarrel that was irremediable. His, too, was a cause for which mighty princes and peers laid lance in rest.”

“Yet Heaven blessed it not” — said Vaudemont.

“ Thine,” continued Margaret, “is but embraced by the robber nobles of Germany, the upstart burghers of the Rhine cities, the paltry and clownish Confederates of the Cantons.”

“But Heaven has blessed it “ replied Vaudemont. “Know, proud woman, that I come to interrupt your treacherous intrigues; no petty adventurer, subsisting and maintaining warfare by sleight rather than force, but a conqueror from a bloody field of battle, in which Heaven has tamed the pride of the ty rant of Burgundy.”

“It is false!” said the Queen, starting; “I believe it not.’

“It is true,” said De Vaudemont, “as true as heaven is above us. — It is four days since I left the field of Granson heaped with Burgundy’s mercenaries — his wealth, his jewels, his plate, his magnificent decorations, the prize of the poor Swiss, who scarce can tell their value. Know you this, Queen Margaret?” continued the young soldier, showing the well-known jewel, which decorated the Duke’s order of the Golden Fleece; “think you not the lion was closely hunted when he left such trophies as these behind him?”

Margaret looked, with dazzled eyes and bewildered thoughts, upon a token which confirmed the Duke’s defeat, and the extinction of her last hopes. Her father, on the contrary, was struck with the heroism of the young warrior, a quality which, except as it existed in his daughter Margaret, had, he feared, taken leave of his family. Admiring in his heart the youth who exposed himself to danger for the meed of praise, almost as much as he did the poets by whom the warrior’s fame is rendered immortal, he hugged his grandson to his bosom, bidding him “gird on his sword in strength,” and assuring him, if money could advance his affairs, he, King Rene, could command ten thousand crowns, any part, or the whole of which, was at Ferrand’s command; thus giving proof of what had been said of him, that his head was incapable of containing two ideas at the same time.

We return to Arthur, who, with the Queen of England’s secretary, Mordaunt, had been not a little surprised by the en trance of the Count de Vaudemont, calling himself the Duke of Lorraine, into the anteroom, in which they kept a kind of guard, followed by a tall strong Swiss, with a huge halberd over his shoulder. The prince naming himself, Arthur did not think it becoming to oppose his entrance to the presence of his grand. father and aunt, especially as it was obvious that his opposition must have created an affray. In the huge staring halberdier, who had sense enough to remain in the anteroom, Arthur was not a little surprised to recognize Sigismund Biederman, who, after staring wildly at him for a moment, like a dog which suddenly recognizes a favorite, rushed up to the young Englishman with a wild cry of gladness, and in hurried accents told him how happy he was to meet with him, and that he had matters of importance to tell him. It was at no time easy for Sigismund to arrange his ideas, and now they were altogether confused by the triumphant joy which he expressed for the recent victory of his countrymen over the Duke of Burgundy; and it was with wonder that Arthur heard his confused and rude, but faithful tale.

“Look you, King Arthur, the Duke had come up with his huge army as far as Granson, which is near the outlet of the great lake of Neufehatel. There were five or six hundred Coufederates in the place, and they held it till provisions failed, and then you know they were forced to give it over, But though hunger is hard to bear, they had better have borne it a day or two longer, for the butcher Charles hung them all up by li~e neck, upon trees round the place, — and there was no swallowing for them, you know, after such usage as that. Meanwhile all was busy on our hills, and every man that had a sword or lance accoutred himself with it. We met at Neufehatel, and some Gennans joined us with the noble Duke of Lorraine. Ah, King Arthur, there is a leader! — we all think him second but to Rudolph of Donnerhugel — you saw him even now — it was he that went into that room — and you saw him before, it is he that was the Blue Knight of Bale; but we called him Laurenz then, for Rudolph said his presence amongst us must not be known to our father, and I did not know myself at that time who he really was. Well, when we came to Neufchatel we were a goodly company; we were fifteen thousand stout Confederates, and of others, Germans and Lorraine men, I will warrant you five thousand more. We heard that the Burgundian was sixty thousand in the field; but we heard at the same time that Charles had hung up our brethren like dogs, and the man was not among us — among the Confederates, I mean — who would stay to count heads, when the question was to avenge them. I would you could have heard the roar of fifteen thousand Swiss demanding to be led against the butcher of their brethren! My father himself, who, you know, is usually so eager for peace, now gave the first voice for battle; so, in the gray of the morning, we descended the lake towards Granson, with tears in our eyes and weapons in our hands, determined to have death or vengeance. We came to a sort of strait, between Vauxmoreux and the lake; there were horse on the level ground between the mountain and the lake; and a large body of infantry on the side of the hill. The Duke of Lorraine and his followers engaged the horse, while we climbed the hill to dispossess the infantry. It was with us the affair of a moment. Every man of us was at home among the crags, and Charles’s men were stuck among them as thou wert, Arthur, when thou didst first come to Geierstein. But there were no kind maidens to lend them their hands to help them down. No, no-There were pikes, clubs, and halberds, many a one, to dash and thrust them from places where they could hardly keep their feet had there been no one to disturb them. So the horsemen, pushed by the Lorrainers, and seeing us upon their flanks, fled as fast as their horses could carry them. Then we drew together again on a fair field, which is buon carmpagna, as the Italian says, where the hills retire from the lake. But lo you, we had scarce arrayed our ranks when we heard such a din and clash of instruments, such a trample of their great horses, such a shouting and crying of men, as if all the soldiers and all the minstrels in France and Germany were striving which should make the loudest noise. Then there was a huge cloud of dust approaching us, and we began to see we must do or die, for this was Charles and his whole army come to support his vanguard. A blast from the mountain dispersed the dust, for they had halted to prepare for battle Oh, good Arthur! you would have given ten years of life but to have seen the sight. There were thousands of horse, all in complete array, glancing against the sun, and hundreds of knights with crowns of gold and silver on their helmets, and thick masses of spears on foot, and cannon, as they call them. I did not know what things they were, which they drew on heavily with bullocks, and placed before their army, but I knew more of them before the morning was over. Well, we were ordered to draw up in a hollow square, as we are taught at exercise, and before we pushed forwards, we were commanded, as is the godly rule and guise of our warfare, to kneel down and pray to God, our Lady, and the blessed saints; and we afterwards learned that Charles, in his arrogance, thought we asked for mercy. Ha! ha! ha! a proper jest. If my father once knelt to him, it was for the sake of Christian blood and godly peace; but on the field of battle, Arnold Biederman would not have knelt to him and his whole chivalry, though he had stood alone with his sons on that field. Well, but Charles, supposing we asked grace, was determined to show us that we had asked it at a graceless face, for he cried,’ Fire my cannon on the coward slaves; it is all the mercy they have to expect from me!” — Bang — bang — bang - off went the things I told you of, like thunder and lightning, and some mischief they did, but the less that we were kneeling; and the saints doubtless gave the huge balls a hoist over the heads of those who were asking grace from them, but from no mortal creatures. So we had the signal to rise and rush on, and I promise you there were no sluggards. Every man felt ten men’s strength. My halberd is no child’s toy — if you have forgotten it, there it is — and yet it trembled in my grasp as if it had been a willow-wand to drive cows with. On we went, when suddenly the cannon was silent, and the earth shook with another and continued growl and battering, like thunder under ground. It was the men-at-arms rushing to charge us. But our leaders knew their trade, and had seen such a sight before — It was, Halt, halt — kneel down in the front-stoop in the second rank — close shoulder to shoulder like brethren, lean all spears forward, and receive them like an iron wall! On they rushed, and there was a rending of lances that would have served the Unterwalden old women with splinters of firewood for a twelvemonth. Down went armed horse-down went accoutred knight-down went banner and bannerman — down went peaked boot and crowned helmet, and of those who fell not a man escaped with life. So they drew off in confusion, and were getting in order to charge again, when the noble Duke Ferrand and his horsemen dashed at them in their own way, and we moved onward to support him. Thus on we pressed, and the foot hardly waited for us, seeing their cavalry so handled. Then if you had seen the dust and heard the blows! the noise of a hundred thousand thrashers, the flight of the chaff which they drive about, would be but a type of it. On my word, I almost thought it shame to dash about my balberd, the rout was so helplessly piteous. Hundreds were slain unresisting, and the whole army was in complete flight.”

“My father, my father!” exclaimed Arthur; “in such a rout, what can have become of him?”

“He escaped safely,” said the Swiss “fled with Charles.” It must have been a bloody field ere he fled,” replied the Englishman.

“Nay,” answered Sigismund, “he took no part in the fight, but merely remained by Charles; and prisoners said it was well for us, for that he is a man of great counsel and action in the wars. And as to flying, a man in such a matter must go back in, he cannot press forward, and there is no shame in it, especially if you be not engaged in your own person.”

As he spoke thus, their conversation was interrupted by Mordaunt, with “Hush, hush — the King and Queen come forth.”

“What am I to do?” said Sigismund, in some alarm. “I care not for the Duke of Lorraine; but what am I to do when Kings and Queens enter?”

“Do nothing but rise, unbonnet yourself, and be silent.” Sigismund did as he was directed.

King Rene came forth arm in arm with his grandson; and Margaret fo............