There was some disorder at the tables. Food remained untouched on dishes and platters. The chimes of the wine fountain played monotonously without pause. The guests at the lower tables talked softly to one another, following the advice of Boucicaut, who thought as little attention as possible should be paid to the King’s condition.
A door opened under the portico and Jean de Bueil re-entered the hall with Maitre d’Harselly, a few other of the King’s physicians, two valets and an old retainer who enjoyed the King’s special confidence, and who was always with him. The doctors’ presence was linked in the King’s consciousness with unspeakable bodily and spiritual torments; he was beside himself again. Neither persuasion nor gentle compulsion could induce him to accompany the court physicians. Finally, they had to carry him away by force past the tables, guests, musicians, servants and the ever-growing group of spectators in the gallery.
“Valentine, Valentine!” shrieked the sick man desperately before the doors shut tight behind him and the doctors. Immediately Louis d’Orléans signalled to his servants; music sounded again from the balcony, cup-bearers and table servants hastily resumed their work. A few dogs played in the hall with some feathers which had dropped from one of the silvered birds decorating the platters; the dwarf slipped away unnoticed between the pillars of the gallery. Orléans sat down beside the Queen. For the first time he saw a look of cruelty in the set of her mouth. She threw her brother-in-law a glance he had never seen in her eyes before.
“Valentine,” she murmured, almost without moving her lips. “Always Valentine. This situation is becoming unbearable, Monseigneur.”
Louis shrugged. “The King is like a child,” he responded softly, beckoning to a cup-bearer to fill her goblet. Isabeau, however, laid her white, fleshy hand over the mouth of the goblet. The page bowed and moved on. “Will you not drink with me, Madame?” The Duke of Orléans spoke with an astonished smile that only partly disguised his wounded feelings.
“It is a situation that must be remedied,” continued Isabeau, her eyes fixed on his face. Orléans laughed, somewhat irritated. He did not understand. After a pause she said in a cold voice, “You can do much to prevent greater difficulties in the future, my lord.” A shadow crossed Louis’ face; he bit his lip. Because the mood among his guests was still constrained, he felt obliged to attempt to restore the lighter atmosphere. While he looked about, trying to think of a way to re-open the conversation, his eyes met those of Berry, who sat staring at him, rather shapeless in his colored brocade, slowly turning his beaker in his hand.
“Really, in all the excitement we have forgotten to drink to the health of the baptized child,” Berry declared with a malicious smile. “Would this not be the time to wish him prosperity and a glorious future?” He raised his goblet. “Charles of Orléans, long may he live!”
It was not long past midnight when Louis set out for the room which the people of Saint-Pol called “the chamber where Monseigneur d’Orléans says his prayers.” He went there frequently and stayed long, especially on those days when circumstances prevented him from going to the chapel of the Celestines. An odor of frankincense and a profound silence, all the more soothing after the hubbub in the dining hall, greeted him when he opened the door. After the dessert there was a rowdy atmosphere at the tables because of the wine and the wit of Louis’ six jesters who were famous for their insolent subtleties. Orléans retained an unpleasant memory of Berry’s flushed face, the empty uncontrollable laughter of his young wife, Isabeau’s barely veiled anger. Over the creased damask, strewn with bread crumbs and fruit pits, the enemies had traded gibes and taunts, encouraged by the forced mirth of the other guests who boisterously approved of everything the fools said as they walked past the tables.
After the Queen’s abrupt departure, the banquet had ended. Orléans had already ordered his chamberlain to arrange a tournament in honor of his new son, to make up for the abortive christening feast. Walking through the narrow draughty corridors he had deliberated whether he should still go to the chapel of the Celestines. But after the strains of the evening he longed for the perfect tranquillity of the chapel. Kneeling in the fragrant twilight on the mosaic tiles, under which his two eldest sons lay buried, he sought to recover the shadowless peace, the serene faith untainted by guilt, which he had known as a child. The cold, quiet room which he entered now awoke memories of his childhood; it was here that he and his brother used to kneel together, leaning against the knees of their governess, the Dame de Roussel. Charles, the elder, could recite all the prayers fluently, without mistakes, and he did it willingly, with scarcely concealed pride; Louis, who could not yet speak clearly, had enough difficulty kneeling and concentrating on keeping his small hands together at the same time, could only stammer after the governess: “Ave Maria — full of grace …”
He shut the heavy door carefully behind him. A perpetual lamp, hanging from long chains, stirred slightly in the draught. The shadows on the face of the image of the Virgin alternately faded and deepened, so that there seemed to be life in the painted eyes and the artfully carved, smiling lips. The Mother of God wore a gilded crown on her head and the cloak which enveloped her as well as the child was stitched with gold thread and jewels. Something in the pale, narrow wooden face reminded him of his wife, equally delicate and pale, who lay beneath the coverlet of her lying-in bed. Was it the sad, patient smile, or the way she held her head, slightly inclined to one side, under the heavy crown? Shame and remorse welled up in Louis, a bitter, scalding wave; he dropped to his knees before the statue, his fists pressed against his forehead. He did not notice the icy coldness of the stone floor. In the silence he heard the throbbing of his heart and the gentle crackling of the hot wax of the altar candles dripping onto the candleholder. He felt overwhelmed by melancholy, the inevitable reaction to tension and great excitement; by sorrow for vanished innocence and childish happiness.
What had become of the two boys in their matching brocade cloaks; the King’s two small sons who had learned their prayers kneeling here? Where had the sounds of their voices gone? And the jingling of the bells on the harness with which, each in turn, they played the part of the horse? Somewhere within these walls their excited cries must still echo — when they played at battles and tourneys with friends Henri de Bar and Charles d’Albret, each window niche had become a fortress, each mosaic tile a territory to be conquered. Although Louis was still a young man, it seemed to have been an infinity since he had come here as a child and as a youth. He remembered his father clearly, although he had been barely eleven years old when Charles V had died. The King usually sent for his sons when he sat in the library, his favorite room, between stacks of manuscripts, beautifully ornamented pages in vellum. To collect books, and sit poring over them in a quiet room behind walls which shut out the outside world, was the only desire he had which approached passion. His library was housed in one of the towers of the Louvre, his imposing castle which dominated Paris with its high battlements and pointed roofs. Bars had been placed before the windows to prevent birds from flying in and damaging the books.
The King loved to bring his little sons here and show them about, after what seemed like an endless climb up the circular staircase which wound between the white walls of the tower. Louis still vividly remembered those hours: first the small procession on the stairs, his father in front, his thin, slightly misshapen body wrapped in a fur-lined mantle, black like all his clothes, and with a velvet hood on his head, intended to protect him against headache and cold draughts; behind him came Charles and Louis, apparently climbing the stairs with all the decorum expected of the sons of a king, but in reality counting the steps under their breaths or trying to push past each other on the narrow landings; and last came the librarian, Giles Malet, who, after the King’s death, would be librarian in Louis’ ducal household. Later, at the tables piled with manuscripts, the conversation between father and sons took on the character of an examination, a random test. The King, leaning against a reading desk, quietly and patiently asked questions in Latin, which he chose to use on these occasions; thoughtful, beautifully constructed, eloquent sentences, strewn with quotations from his favorite writer, Aristotle.