horrible ingenuity, so that a person of
ordinary size could neither stand up at his full height nor lie lengthwise in
them. Some ascribe this horrid device to Balue himself. At any rate, he was
confined in one of these dens for eleven years, nor did Louis permit him to be
liberated till his last illness.
 
56 While I perused these passages in the old manuscript chronicle, I could not
help feeling astonished that an intellect acute as that of Louis XI. certainly
was, could so delude itself by a sort of superstition of which one would think
the stupidest savages incapable; but the terms of the King's prayer on a similar
occasion, as preserved by Brantome, are of a tenor fully as extraordinary. It is
that which, being overheard by a fool or jester, was by him made public, and let
in light on an act of fratricide which might never have been suspected. The way
in which the story is narrated by the corrupted courtier, who could jest with
all that is criminal as well as with all that is profligate, is worthy the
reader's notice; for such actions are seldom done where there are not men with
hearts of the nether millstone, capable and willing to make them matters of
laughter.
»Among the numerous good tricks of dissimulation, feints and finesses of
gallantry, which the good King (Louis XI.) did in his time, he put to death his
brother, the Duke de Guyenne, at the moment when the Duke least thought of such
a thing, and while the King was making the greatest show of love to him during
his life, and of affection for him at his death, managing the whole concern with
so much art, that it would never have been known had not the King taken into his
own service a fool who had belonged to his deceased brother. But it chanced that
Louis, being engaged in his devout prayers and orisons at the high altar of our
Lady of Clery, whom he called his good patroness, and no person nigh except this
fool, who, without his knowledge, was within earshot, he thus gave vent to his
pious homilies: -
Ah, my good lady, my gentle mistress, my only friend, in whom alone I have
resource, I pray you to supplicate God in my behalf, and to be my advocate with
him that he may pardon me the death of my brother, whom I caused to be poisoned
by that wicked Abbot of Saint John. I confess my guilt to thee as to my good
patroness and mistress. But then what could I do? he was