Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by means of fresh ventures. Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth century. His father was a furrier, already sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son’s marrying, in 1418, the provost’s daughter of his own city. Some years afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine, and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce. In 1432 a squire in the service of the Duke of Burgundy was travelling in the Holy Land, and met him at Damascus in company with several Venetians, Genoese, Florentine, and Catalan traders with whom he was doing business. “He was,” says his contemporary, Thomas Basin, “a man unlettered and of plebeian family, but of great and ingenious mind, well versed in the practical affairs of that age. He was the first in all France to build and man ships which transported to Africa and the East woollen stuffs and other produce of the kingdom, penetrated as far as Egypt, and brought back with them silken stuffs and all manner of spices, which they distributed not only in France, but in Catalonia and the neighboring countries, whereas heretofore it was by means of the Venetians, the Genoese, or the Barcelonese that such supplies found their way into France.” [Illustration: Jacques Coeur----165]