Francis, “if thou do not first give me a patent signed by thy master, containing an appointment of time and place.”  “Sir, I have orders to read you the cartel, and give it you afterwards.”  “How, pray!” cried the king, rising up angrily:  “doth thy master pretend to introduce new fashions in my kingdom, and give me laws in my own court?” Burgundy, without being put out, began again:  “Sir, . . . " “Nay,” said Francis, “I will not suffer him to speak to me before he has given me appointment of time and place.  Give it me, or return as thou hast come.”  “Sir, I cannot, without your permission, do my office; if you will not deign to grant it to me, let me have your refusal handed me, and your ratification I of my safe-conduct for my return.”  “I am quite willing,” said the king; “let him have it!” Burgundy set off again for Madrid, and the incident was differently reported by the two courts; but there was no further question of a duel between the two kings.

One would not think of attempting to decide, touching this question of single combat, how far sincerity was on the side of Francis or of Charles.  No doubt they were both brave; the former with more brilliancy than his rival, the latter, at need, with quite as much firmness.  But in sending challenges one to the other, as they did on this occasion, they were obeying a dying-out code, and rather attempting to keep up chivalrous appearances than to put seriously in practice the precedents of their ancestors.  It was no longer a time when the fate of a people could be placed in the hands of a few valiant warriors, such as the three Horatii and the three Curiatii, or the thirty Bretons and thirty English.  The era of great nations and great contests was beginning, and one is inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles V. were themselves aware that their mutual challenges would not come to any personal encounter.  The war which continued between them in Italy was not much more serious or decisive; both sides were weary of it, and neither one nor the other of the two sovereigns espied any great chances of success.  The French army was wasting itself, in the kingdom of Naples, upon petty, inconclusive engagements; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on the 15th of August, 1528; a desire for peace became day by day stronger; it was made, first of all, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529, between Charles V. and Pope Clement VII.; and then a conference was opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between Charles V. and Francis I. likewise.  Two women, Francis I.’s mother and Charles V.’s aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation of it; they had both of them acquired the good sense and the moderation which come from experience of affairs and from difficulties in life; they did not seek to give one another mutual surprises and to play-off one another reciprocally; they resided in two contiguous houses, between which they had caused a communication