Charles VII. of France was, like many of his predecessors, a _pauvre
Sire_ enough. He had thought more of his amusements than of the troubles
of his country; but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes spring
from despair as well as from lightness of heart; and after all, the
dread responsibility, the sense that in all his helplessness and
inability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all, would
seem to have moved him from time to time. A secret doubt in his heart,
divulged to no man, had added bitterness to the conviction of his own
weakness. Was he indeed the heir of France? Had he any right to that
sustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midst
of every discouragement? His very mother had given him up and set him
aside. He was described as the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed by
Charles and Isabeau his parents. If anyone knew, she knew; and was it
possible that more powerful even than the English, more cruel than the
Burgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effort
vain? There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's
heart, and little worthy as was this King, the story we are here told
has a thrill of truth in it. It is reported by a certain Sala, who
declares that he had it from the lips of Charles's favourite and close
follower, the Seigneur de Boisi, a courtier who, after the curious
custom of the time, shared even the bed of his master. This was confided
to Boisi by the King in the deepest confidence, in the silence of the
wakeful night:

"This was in the time of the good King Charles, when he knew not what
step to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for as
I have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. The King in
this extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; and
there he made a prayer to our Lord, in his heart, without pronouncing