How gossip about this strange departure of the French heir fluttered here and there!  Du Clercq[13] tells the story with some variation from the above outline, laying more stress on the popular appeal to the king for relief from Louis’s transgressions as governor of Dauphine, and enlarging on the accusation that Louis was responsible for the death of La belle Agnes, “the first lady of the land possessing the king’s perfect love.”  He adds that the dauphin was further displeased because the niece of this same Agnes, the Demoiselle de Villeclerc, was kept at court after her aunt’s death.  Wherever the king went he was followed by this lady, accompanied by a train of beauties.  It was this conduct of his father that had forced the son to absent himself from court life for twelve years and more, during which time he received no allowance as was his rightful due, and thus he had been obliged to make his own requisitions from his seigniory.

There were other reports that the king was quite ready to accord his son his full state; others, again, that Charles drove Louis into exile from mere dislike and intended to make his second son his heir and successor.  At this point Du Clercq’s manuscript is broken off abruptly and the remainder of his conjectures are lost to posterity.  Where the text begins again, the author dismisses all this contradictory hearsay and says in his own character as veracious chronicler, “I concern myself only with what actually occurred.  The dauphin gave a feast in the forest and then departed secretly to avoid being arrested by Dammartin.”

This flight was the not unnatural termination of a long series of misunderstandings between a father whose private conduct was not above criticism, and a son, clever, unscrupulous, destitute of respect for any person or thing except for the superstitious side of his religion.

Charles VII. was a curious instance of a man whose mental development occurred during the later years of his life.  When his son was under his personal influence his character was not one to instil filial deference, and Louis certainly cherished neither respect nor affection for the father whose inert years he remembered vividly.

Whether, indeed, the dauphin had any part in Agnes Sorel’s death which gave him especial reason to dread the king’s anger, is uncertain, but of his action there is no doubt.  To St. Claude he travelled as rapidly as his steed could go, and from that spot on Burgundian soil he despatched the following exemplary letter to his father: 

    “MY VERY REDOUBTABLE LORD: 

“To your good grace I recommend myself as humbly as I can.  Be pleased to know, my very redoubtable lord, that because, as you know, my uncle of Burgundy intends shortly to go on a crusade against the Turk in defence of the Catholic Faith and because my desire is to go, your good pleasure permitting, considering that our Holy Father the Pope bade me so to do, and that I am