Duke Philippe would not bear close inspection; the striking features and full red lips, that had made so effective an appearance in the gay procession seen from a distance, seemed harsh, haughty, and sensual near at hand, and when brought into close contact with the strange bright stern purity, now refined into hectic transparency, of King Henry’s face, the grand and melancholy majesty of the royal Stewart’s, or even the spare, keen, irregular visage of John of Bedford.  And while his robes were infinitely more costly than—­and his ornaments tenfold outnumbered—­all that the three island princes wore, yet no critical eye could take him for their superior, even though his tone in addressing an inferior was elaborately affable and condescending, and theirs was always the frankness of an equal.  Where they gave the sense of pure gold, he seemed like some ruder metal gilt and decorated; as if theirs were reality, his the imitation; theirs the truth, his the display.

But in reality his birth was as princely as theirs; and no monarch in Europe, not even Henry, equalled him in material resources; he was idolized by the Parisians; and Henry was aware that France had been made over to England more by his revenge for his father’s murder at Montereau than by the victory at Agincourt.  Therefore the King endured his grand talk about our arms and our intentions; and for Malcolm’s sake, James submitted to a sort of patronage, as if meant to imply that if Philippe the Magnificent chose to espouse the cause of a captive king, his ransom would be the merest trifle.

When Henry bade him to the Pentecostal banquet, ‘when kings keep state,’ he graciously accepted the invitation for himself and his two sisters, Marguerite, widow of the second short-lived Dauphin, and Anne, still unmarried; but when Henry further explained his plan of feasting merely with the orderly, and apportioning the food in real alms, the Duke by no means approved.

‘Feed those miserables!’ he said.  ’One gains nothing thereby!  They make no noise; whereas if you affront the others, who know how to cry out, they will revile you like dogs!

‘I will not be a slave to the rascaille,’ said Henry.

’Ah, my fair lord, you, a victor, may dispense with these cares; but for a poor little prince like me, it is better to reign in men’s hearts than on their necks.’

‘In the hearts of honest men—­on the necks of knaves,’ said Henry.

Philippe shrugged his shoulders.  He was wise in his own generation; for he had all the audible voices in Paris on his side, while the cavils at Henry’s economy have descended to the present time.

‘Do you see your rival, Sir?’ said the voice of the Bishop of Therouenne in Malcolm’s ear, just as the Duke had begun to rise to take leave; and he pointed out a knight of some thirty years, glittering with gay devices from head to foot, and showing a bold proud visage, exaggerating the harshness of the Burgundian lineaments.