n in itself.

At Charles's birth an order of knighthood was inaugurated in his honour.
At nine years old he was a squire; at eleven, he had the escort of a
chaplain and a schoolmaster; at twelve, his uncle the king made him a
pension of twelve thousand livres d'or.[15] He saw the most brilliant
and the most learned persons of France in his father's court; and would
not fail to notice that these brilliant and learned persons were one and
all engaged in rhyming. Indeed, if it is difficult to realise the part
played by pictures, it is perhaps even more difficult to realise that
played by verses in the polite and active history of the age. At the
siege of Pontoise, English and French exchanged defiant ballades over
the walls.[16] If a scandal happened, as in the loathsome thirty-third
story of the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," all the wits must make rondels
and chansonettes, which they would hand from one to another with an
unmanly sneer. Ladies carried their favourite's ballades in their
girdles.[17] Margaret of Scotland, all the world knows already, kissed
Alain Chartier's lips in honour of the many virtuous thoughts and golden
sayings they had uttered; but it is not so well known that this princess
was herself the most industrious of poetasters, that she is supposed to
have hastened her death by her literary vigils, and sometimes wrote as
many as twelve rondels in the day.[18] It was in rhyme, even, that the
young Charles should learn his lessons. He might get all manner of
instruction in the truly noble art of the chase, not without a smack of
ethics by the way, from the compendious didactic poem of Gace de la
Bigne. Nay, and it was in rhyme that he should learn rhyming: in the
verses of his father's Maitre d'Hotel, Eustache Deschamps, which treated
of _l'art de dictier et de faire chancons, ballades, virelais et
rondeaux_, along with many other matters worth attention, from the
courts of Heaven to the misgovernment of France.[19] At this rate, all
knowledge is to be had in a goody, and the end of it is an old song. We
need not wonder when we hear from Monstrelet that Charles was a very
well educated person. He could string Latin texts together by the hour,
and make ballades and rondels better than Eustache Deschamps himself. He
had seen a mad king who would not change his clothes, and a drunken
emperor who could not keep his hand from the wine-cup. He had spoken a
great deal with jesters and fiddlers, and with the proflig