. had a heart more easily touched. When Joan,
in mourning, came and threw herself at his feet, saying, "Brother, my
husband is dragging on his life in prison; and I am in such trouble that
I know not what I ought to say in his defence. If he has had aught
wherewith to reproach himself, I am the only one whom he has outraged.
Pardon him, brother; you will never have so happy a chance of being
generous." "You shall have him, sister," said Charles, kissing her;
"grant Heaven that you may not repent one day of that which you are doing
for him to-day!" Some days after this interview, in May, 1491, Charles,
without saying anything about it to the duchess, Anne of Bourbon, set off
one evening from Plessis du Pare on pretence of going a-hunting, and on
reaching Berry sent for the Duke of Orleans from the Tower of Bourges.
Louis, in raptures at breathing the air of freedom, at the farthest
glimpse he caught of the king, leaped down from his horse and knelt,
weeping, on the ground. "Charles," says the chronicler, "sprang upon his
neck, and knew not what cheer (reception) to give him, to make it
understood that he was acting of his own motion and free will." Charles
ill understood his sister Anne, and could scarcely make her out. But two
convictions had found their way into that straightforward and steady mind
of hers; one, that a favorable time had arrived for uniting Brittany with
France, and must be seized; the other, that the period of her personal
dominion was over, and that all she had to do was to get herself well
established in her new position. She wrote to the king her brother to
warn him against the accusations and wicked rumors of which she might
possibly be the object. He replied to her on the 21st of June, 1491:
"My good sister, my dear, Louis de Pesclins has informed me that you have
knowledge that certain matters have been reported to me against you;
whereupon I answered him that nought of the kind had been reported to me;
and I assure you that none would dare so to speak to me; for, in
whatsoever fashion it might, I would not put faith therein, as I hope to
tell you when we are together,--bidding you adieu, my good sister, my
dear." After having re-assured his sister, Charles set about reconciling
her, as well as her husband, the Duke of Bourbon, with her
brother-in-law, the Duke of Orleans. Louis, who was of a frank and by no
means rancorous disposition, as he himself said and proved at a later
period, s