He charmed by his grace, albeit but ill-looking and of weak constitution.[1235] His temperament was so out of harmony with his position that he may be said to have endured his life rather than to have lived it.

His father assassinated by night in the Rue Barbette in Paris by order of Duke John; his mother a perennial fount of tears, dying of anger and of grief in a Franciscan nunnery; the two S's, standing for _Soupirs_ (sighs) and _Souci_ (care), the emblems and devices of her mourning, revealing her ingenious mind fancifully elegant even in despair; the Armagnacs, the Burgundians, the Cabochiens, cutting each other's throats around him; these were the sights he had witnessed when little more than a child.

Then he had been wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Azincourt.
[Footnote 1235: Bibliotheque Nationale, ms.fr.966, fol.

1.] Now, for fourteen years, dragged from castle to castle, from one end to the other of the island of fogs; imprisoned within thick walls, closely guarded, receiving two or three of his countrymen at long intervals, but never permitted to converse with one except before witnesses, he felt old before his time, blighted by misfortune.

"Fruit fallen in its greenness, I was put to ripen on prison straw.