A recent event had probably much to do with his decision.  His most indomitable foe, she to whom the king and his councillors had lately granted a portion of the vengeance she was seeking to take on him, Valentine of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, died on the 4th of December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied with the moral reparation she had obtained in her enemy’s absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the Duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked.  For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman’s heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial.  At the close of her life she had taken for device, “Nought have I more; more hold I nought” (Bien ne m ’est plus; plus ne m ’est rien); and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber.  In her last hours she had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another still whom she remembered.  She sent for a child, six years of age, John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d’Enghien, wife of Sire de Cany-Dunois.  “This one,” said she, “was filched from me; yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father’s death.”  Twenty-five years later John was the famous Bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, Charles VII.’s lieutenant-general, and Joan of Arc’s comrade in the work of saving the French kingship and France.

[Illustration:  Death of Valentine de Milan——­45]

The Duke of Burgundy’s negotiations at Tours were not fruitless.  The result was, that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was concluded and an interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young Duke of Orleans, his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together to hear the king declare that he pardoned the Duke of Burgundy.  The duke prayed “my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance;” and the princes of Orleans “assented to what the king commanded them, and forgave their cousin the Duke of Burgundy everything entirely.”  On the way back from Chartres the Duke of Burgundy’s fool kept playing with a church-paten (called “peace"), and thrusting it under his cloak, saying, “See, this is a cloak of peace;” and, “Many folks,” says Juvenal des Ursins, “considered this fool pretty wise.”  The Duke of Burgundy had good reason, however, for seeking this outward reconciliation; it put an end to a position too extended not to become pretty soon untenable; the peace was a cause of great joy at Paris; the king was not long coming back; and two hundred thousand persons, says the chronicle, went out to meet him, shouting, “Noel!”