As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly.  The English, instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles.  The French ambassadors refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole royal house, and of suffering for the people.  Nevertheless, the duke showed strong scruples.  The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor.  He asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected with the pope’s legates, another with English doctors, and another with French doctors.  He was granted all three, though they were more calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones.  The legates ended by solemnly saying to him, “We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the holy council assembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more pleasing in the eyes of God, or further augment your fame in this world.”  For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September.  He was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him.  Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the principal causes of shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from the stage of the world.  Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and worldly expedience was concerned.  He declared his readiness to accept the proposals which had been communicated to him by the ambassadors of Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England might say or do.

There was great and general joy in France.  It was peace, and national reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves Frenchmen.  Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to consecrate this alliance.  On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated mass, the king laid his hands