which his
host, too feeble now to ride or hunt, did the honours of his house
right courteously, providing sweet music during all the dinner, and a
ball afterwards, at which his wife danced for an hour with the gay Don
Pedro. After a ride round the castle grounds the visitor went off to
Paris, and can hardly have been surprised, when he returned to Rouen
and found the Admiral had died, to receive a message from the pretty
widow to come up and hear the news.

But the lovers were unlucky, for she might not wed again so soon after
her widowhood, and he was under orders for the war, and had no
permission for such dalliance from his master, the King of Castille.
So he sailed away towards Harfleur, after many protestations of
affection on each side, during an eclipse of the sun which came on as
he left Rouen harbour, and much terrified his sailors. And the end of
his little story is that he married Dona Beatrix of Portugal, and died
in 1453; while Jeanne de Bellengues espoused as her second husband
Louis Mallet de Graville, Sieur de Montagu, Grand-Master of the
Arbaletriers of France, and died still in her youth, in 1419. She was
buried in the chapel of the Trinity in Rouen Cathedral, and all her
husband's lands were confiscated by the English King. The intimate
connection that existed at this time with Spain is exemplified again
by the marriage of Robert de Bracquemont, who surrendered Pont de
l'Arche to King Henry during the English advance on Rouen, with Inez
de Mendoza, daughter of a high functionary at the Court of Castille,
where he had been the French ambassador, and owned estates in
Fuentesol and Pennarenda.

I have mentioned the irritation of the populace when Louis d'Orleans
was received so well by the sheriffs. But their disgust at "the six
barrels of wine, and the bales of royal scarlet" then presented may
not have been merely political; for many must have remembered how in
1390 the Hotel de Ville had actually been seized for debt owing to the
extravagant gifts of silver plate presented to Isabeau of Bavaria. The
family of Mustel in fact had "fait mettre en criees et subhastations
le manoir de la ville." And in times of such distress the citizens may
well have objected to any useless ostentation on the part of their
officials.

Disturbances continued rife in Rouen through these terrible years of
the weakness of the King. Chains had to be fastened permanently across
many squares and streets in the town, which h