of the sexes. The doctrines of chivalry had
established, in theory at least, a system in which Beauty was the governing and
remunerating divinity - Valour her slave, who caught his courage from her eye,
and gave his life for her slightest service. It is true, the system here, as in
other branches, was stretched to fantastic extravagance, and cases of scandal
not unfrequently arose. Still they were generally such as those mentioned by
Burke, where frailty was deprived of half its guilt, by being purified from all
its grossness. In Louis XIth's practice, it was far otherwise. He was a low
voluptuary, seeking pleasure without sentiment, and despising the sex from whom
he desired to obtain it; his mistresses were of inferior rank, as little to be
compared with the elevated though faulty character of Agnes Sorel, as Louis was
to his heroic father, who freed France from the threatened yoke of England. In
like manner, by selecting his favourites and ministers from among the dregs of
the people, Louis showed the slight regard which he paid to eminent station and
high birth; and although this might be not only excusable but meritorious, where
the monarch's fiat promoted obscure talent, or called forth modest worth, it was
very different when the King made his favourite associates of such men as
Tristan l'Hermite, the chief of his Marshalsea, or police; and it was evident
that such a prince could no longer be, as his descendant Francis elegantly
designed himself, »the first gentleman in his dominions.«
    Nor were Louis's sayings and actions in private or public of a kind which
could redeem such gross offences against the character of a man of honour. His
word, generally accounted the most sacred test of a man's character, and the
least impeachment of which is a capital offence by the code of honour, was
forfeited without scruple on the slightest occasion, and often accompanied by
the perpetration of the most enormous crimes. If he broke his own personal and
plighted faith, he did not treat that of the public with more ceremony. His
sending an inferior person disguised as a herald to Edward IV., was in those
days, when heralds were esteemed the sacred depositaries of public and national
faith, a daring imposition, of which few save this unscrupulous prince would
have been guilty.1
    In short, the manners, sentiments, and actions of Louis XI. were such as
were inconsistent with the principles of chivalry, and his caustic wit was
sufficiently disposed to ridicule a system adopted on what he considered as the
most absurd of all bases