“Now, Monseigneur, since the king has been pleased to deprive you of Dauphine ... you are to-day lord and prince without land.  But, nevertheless, you shall not be without a country, for all that I have is yours and I place it within your hand without reserving aught except my life and that of my wife.  Pray take heart.  If God does not abandon me I will never abandon you[8].”

The duke made good his words by giving his guest the estate of Genappe, of which Louis took possession at the end of July.  Then as a further step to make things pleasant for the exile, Philip sent for Charlotte of Savoy who had remained under her father’s care ever since the formal marriage in 1451.  She was now eighteen.

It was an agreeable spot, this estate at Genappe.  Louis’s favourite amusement of the chase was easy of access.  “The court is at present at Louvain,” wrote a courtier[9] on July 1st, “and Monseigneur the Dauphin likes it very much, for there is good hunting and falconry and a great number of rabbits within and without the city.”  With killing of every kind at his service, what greater solace could a homeless prince expect?

From Louvain to Genappe is no great distance, and the sum of 1200 livres, furnished by Philip for the dauphin’s journey to his new abode, seemed a large provision.  The pension then settled on him was 36,000 livres, and when the dauphiness arrived 1000 livres a month were provided for her private purse[10].

Pleasant was existence in this chateau.  There was no dearth of company to throng around the prince in exile, and the dauphin allowed no prejudice of mere likes and dislikes, no consideration of duty towards his host to hamper him in making useful friends.  A word here and a word there, aptly thrown in at a time when Philip’s anger had exasperated, when Charles had failed to conciliate, were very potent in intimating to many a Burgundian servant that there might come a time when a new king across the border might better appreciate their real value than their present or future sovereign.

Hunting was a favourite amusement, but the dauphin did not confine his invitations to sportsmen.  The easy accessibility of the little court attracted men of science and of letters as well as others capable of making the time pass agreeably.  When there was nothing else on foot, it is said that the company amused themselves by telling stories, each in turn, and out of their tales grew the collection of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles[11], named in imitation of Boccaccio’s Cento Novelle.

The first printed edition of this collection was issued in Paris, in 1486, by Antoine Verard, who thus admonishes the gentle reader:  “Note that whenever Monseigneur is referred to, Monseigneur the Dauphin must be understood, who has since succeeded to the crown and is King Louis.  Then he was in the land of the Duke of Burgundy.”  Another editor asserts that Monseigneur is evidently the Duke of Burgundy and not Louis, and later authorities decide that Anthony de la Sale wrote the whole collection in imitation of Boccaccio, and that the names of the narrators were as imaginative or rather as editorial as the rest of the volume.