Throughout the visit the minor points of etiquette were observed with the utmost care.  Both duchess and countess refrained from employing their train-bearers when they entered the dauphin’s presence.  When he insisted that his hostess should walk by his side, she managed her own train if possible.  If she accepted any aid from her gentlemen she was very careful to keep her hand upon the dress, so that technically she was still her own train-bearer.  Then, too, when the duchess ate in the dauphin’s presence, there was no cover to her dish and nothing was tasted in her behalf.

The Duke of Burgundy had to supply Louis with every requisite, but he, too, never forgot for a moment that this dependent visitor was future monarch of France.  Without doors as within, every minor detail of etiquette was observed.  The duke never so far forgot himself in the ardour of the chase as to permit his horse’s head to advance beyond the tail of the prince’s steed.

In February, 1457, on St. Valentine’s Eve, Mary of Burgundy was born.  Our observant court lady describes in detail the ceremonial observed in the chamber of the Countess of Charolais and at the baptism.  Brussels rang with joyful bells and blazed with torches, four hundred supplied by the city ahd two hundred by the young father.  Each torch weighed four or five pounds.

The Count of Charolais was his own messenger to announce the birth of his daughter to the dauphin and to ask him to stand god-father.  Joyful was Louis to accept the invitation and to bestow his mother’s name on the baby-girl.  Ste. Gudule was so far from the palace that the Church of the Caudenberg was selected for the ceremony and richly adorned with Holland linen, velvet, and cloth of gold.  The duchess carried her grandchild to the font,—­a font draped with cramoisy velvet.

“Monsieur the dauphin stood on the right and I heard it said that there was no one on the left because there was none his equal.  On that day, the duchess wore a round skirt a la Portuguaise, edged with fur.  There was no train of cloth nor of silk, so I cannot state who carried it,”

sagely remarks Alienor with incontrovertible logic.

Later events made later chroniclers less enthusiastic about the honour paid to Mademoiselle[21] Mary by the dauphin.  In a manuscript of La Marche’s Memoires at The Hague, the words “Lord! what a god-father!” appear in the margin of the page describing the baptism.[22] But in these early days of his five years’ sojourn, Louis seems to have been a pleasant person and to have posed as the ruined poor relation, entirely free from pride at his high birth and delighted to repay hospitality by his general complaisance.

Charles VII. received all the reports with somewhat cynical amusement.  He had no great trust in his son.  “Louis is fickle and changeable and I do not doubt that he will return here before long.  I am not at all pleased with those who influence him,” are his words as quoted by d’Escouchy.[23]