The last grace and refinements of chivalric society blossom in the poetry of CHARLES D'ORLEANS, "la grace exquise des choses freles." He was born in 1391, son of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and an Italian mother, Valentine of Milan. Married at fifteen to the widow of Richard II. of England, he lost his father by assassination, his mother by the stroke of grief, his wife in childbirth. From the battlefield of Agincourt he passed to England, where he remained a prisoner, closely guarded, for twenty-five years. It seems as if events should have made him a tragic poet; but for Charles d'Orleans poetry was the brightness or the consolation of his exile. His elder years at the little court of Blois were a season of delicate gaiety, when he enjoyed the recreations of age, and smiled at the passions of youth. He died in 1465. Neither depth of reflection nor masculine power of feeling finds expression in his verse; he does not contribute new ideas to poetry, nor invent new forms, but he rendered the old material and made the accepted moulds of verse charming by a gracious personality and an exquisite sense of art. Ballade, rondeau, chanson, each is manipulated with the skill of a goldsmith setting his gems. He sings of the beauty of woman, the lighter joys of love, the pleasure of springtide, the song of the birds, the gliding of a stream or a cloud; or, as an elder man, he mocks with amiable irony the fatiguing ardours of young hearts. When St. Valentine's day comes round, his good physician "Nonchaloir" advises him to abstain from choosing a mistress, and recommends an easy pillow. The influence of Charles d'Orleans on French poetry was slight; it was not until 1734 that his forgotten poems were brought to light. In the close of the mediaeval period, when old things were passing away and new things were as yet unborn, the minds of men inclined to fill the void with mockery and satire. Martin Lefranc (_c_. 1410-61) in his _Champion des Dames_--a poem of twenty-four thousand lines, in which there is much spirit and vigour of versification--balances one against another the censure and the praise of women. Coquillard, with his railleries assuming legal forms and phrases, laughs at love and lovers, or at the _Droits Nouveaux_ of a happy time when licence had become the general law. Henri Baude, a realist in his keen observation, satirises with direct, incisive force, the manners and morals of his age. Martial d'Auvergne (_c_. 1433-1508), chronicling events in his _Vigiles de Charles VII._, a poem written according to the scheme of the liturgical Vigils, is eloquent in his expression of the wrongs of the poor, and in his condemnation of the abuses of power and station. If the _Amant rendu Cordelier_ be his, he too appears among those who jest at the follies and extravagance of love. His prose _Arrets d'Amour_ are discussions and decisions of the imaginary court which determines questions of gallantry.