dded, pointing to the
basin and ewer, "was the furniture of your Majesty's toilette of other
substance than silver?"

"Nay," said the King, with a constrained smile, "that last remark upon
the shaving utensils, Oliver, is too much in the style of thine own
peculiar occupation to be combated by any one.--True it is, that when I
was only a refugee, and an exile, I was served upon gold plate by order
of the same Charles, who accounted silver too mean for the Dauphin,
though he seems to hold that metal too rich for the King of France.
Well, Oliver, we will to bed.--Our resolution has been made and
executed; there is nothing to be done, but to play manfully the game
on which we have entered. I know that my cousin of Burgundy, like other
wild bulls, shuts his eyes when he begins his career. I have but to
watch that moment, like one of the tauridors [Spanish bull fighters]
whom we saw at Burgos, and his impetuosity places him at my mercy."

CHAPTER XXVII: THE EXPLOSION

'T is listening fear, and dumb amazement all,
When to the startled eye, the sudden glance
Appears far south, eruptive through the cloud.

THOMSON'S SUMMER

The preceding chapter, agreeably to its title, was designed as a
retrospect which might enable the render fully to understand the terms
upon which the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy stood together,
when the former, moved partly perhaps by his belief in astrology, which
was represented as favourable to the issue of such a measure, and in a
great measure doubtless by the conscious superiority of his own powers
of mind over those of Charles, had adopted the extraordinary, and upon
any other ground altogether inexplicable, resolution of committing his
person to the faith of a fierce and exasperated enemy--a resolution also
the more rash and unaccountable, as there were various examples in that
stormy time to show that safe conducts, however solemnly plighted, had
proved no assurance for those in whose favour they were conceived; and
indeed the murder of the Duke's grandfather at the Bridge of Montereau,
in presence of the father of Louis, and at an interview solemnly
agreed upon for the establishment of peace and amnesty, was a horrible
precedent, should the Duke be disposed to resort to it.

But the temper of Charles, though rough, fierce, headlong, and
unyielding, was not, unless in the full tide of passion, faithless or
ungenerous, faults which usually belong to colde