men, has made of that monarch one of the best beloved of
our hearts. Dear to us as he is, in Eastcheap as at Agincourt, and
more in the former than the latter, even our sense of the disgraceful
character of that bargain, _le traite infame_ of Troyes, by which Queen
Isabeau betrayed her son, and gave her daughter and her country to the
invader, is softened a little by our high estimation of the hero. But
this is simple national prejudice; regarded from the French side, or
even by the impartial judgment of general humanity, it was an infamous
treaty, and one which might well make the blood boil in French veins.

We look at it at present, however, through the atmosphere of the
nineteenth century, when France is all French, and when the royal house
of England has no longer any French connection. If George III., much
more George II., on the basis of his kingdom of Hanover, had attempted
to make himself master of a large portion of Germany, the situation
would have been more like that of Henry V. in France than anything we
can think of now. It is true the kings of England were no longer dukes
of Normandy--but they had been so within the memory of man: and that
noble duchy was a hereditary appanage of the family of the Conqueror;
while to other portions of France they had the link of temporary
possession and inheritance through French wives and mothers; added to
which is the fact that Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, thirsting to avenge
his father's blood upon the Dauphin, would have been probably a more
dangerous usurper than Henry, and that the actual sovereign, the
unfortunate, mad Charles VI., was in no condition to maintain his own
rights.

There is little evidence, however, that this treaty, or anything so
distinct in detail, had made much impression on the outlying borders of
France. What was known there, was only that the English were victorious,
that the rightful King of France was still uncrowned and unacknowledged,
and that the country was oppressed and humiliated under the foot of the
invader. The fact that the new King was not yet the Lord's anointed, and
had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was
a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more
importance than many greater things--being at once more visible and
matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any
other circumstance in the dreadful tale.

Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we sh