Two days afterwards a deputation from the city dames of Paris waited upon the Duchess of Burgundy, and implored her to use her influence for the re-establishment of peace.

She answered, "My good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray for it night and day to the Lord our God, for I believe that we all have great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his substance." At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip's decision was already taken.

He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law, whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design.

Being convinced of the necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England's advisers whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it.
It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of Pope Eugenius IV.

should be invited to it, and that consultation should be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of the two kingdoms.
Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there arrived at Arras the pope's legates and the ambassadors of the Emperor Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan.