to her, “about my husband’s release, I have conceived the idea of setting down in writing the fashion in which peace might be had, and my said husband be released.  I am writing it out for the king, and you will see it all.  I pray you, sister, to look to it that I may get a few words in answer; it has been a very sad thing for me that I never see you now.”  There is no trace of any answer from Anne to her sister.  Charles VIII. had a heart more easily touched.  When Joan, in mourning, came and threw herself at his feet, saying, “Brother, my husband is dragging on his life in prison; and I am in such trouble that I know not what I ought to say in his defence.  If he has had aught wherewith to reproach himself, I am the only one whom he has outraged.  Pardon him, brother; you will never have so happy a chance of being generous.”  “You shall have him, sister,” said Charles, kissing her; “grant Heaven that you may not repent one day of that which you are doing for him to-day!” Some days after this interview, in May, 1491, Charles, without saying anything about it to the duchess, Anne of Bourbon, set off one evening from Plessis du Pare on pretence of going a-hunting, and on reaching Berry sent for the Duke of Orleans from the Tower of Bourges.  Louis, in raptures at breathing the air of freedom, at the farthest glimpse he caught of the king, leaped down from his horse and knelt, weeping, on the ground.  “Charles,” says the chronicler, “sprang upon his neck, and knew not what cheer (reception) to give him, to make it understood that he was acting of his own motion and free will.”  Charles ill understood his sister Anne, and could scarcely make her out.  But two convictions had found their way into that straightforward and steady mind of hers; one, that a favorable time had arrived for uniting Brittany with France, and must be seized; the other, that the period of her personal dominion was over, and that all she had to do was to get herself well established in her new position.  She wrote to the king her brother to warn him against the accusations and wicked rumors of which she might possibly be the object.  He replied to her on the 21st of June, 1491:  “My good sister, my dear, Louis de Pesclins has informed me that you have knowledge that certain matters have been reported to me against you; whereupon I answered him that nought of the kind had been reported to me; and I assure you that none would dare so to speak to me; for, in whatsoever fashion it might, I would not put faith therein, as I hope to tell you when we are together,—­bidding you adieu, my good sister, my dear.”  After having re-assured his sister, Charles set about reconciling her, as well as her husband, the Duke of Bourbon, with her brother-in-law, the Duke of Orleans.  Louis, who was of a frank and by no means rancorous disposition, as he himself said and proved at a later period, submitted with a good grace; and on the 4th of September, 1491, at La Fleche, the princes jointly made oath, by their