The remainder of the musée installed in the Palace has little that is of first-rate interest, except, the ducal kitchen, some good Burgundian altarpieces, and a large collection of modern statues, chiefly by the Burgundian Rude (1784-1855).[168] Among hundreds of inferior pictures, I was most interested in three paintings of Dijon Castle, in salle 8, by G. P. H. Jeanniot. Dijon Castle does not now exist. If the reader can endure more history, I will tell him the reason why. If you will walk down the Rue de la Liberté, in this town, and turn, two hundred yards or so below the arch, along one of the narrow streets to the left, you will emerge on to a large _place_, in the centre of which stands a great, white building. That white building, the Post Office, occupies the site of the Castle, which, until a few years ago, stood as a memento of the end of the Valois Dukes. Dijon, however, now grown to be a great and prosperous city, a centre of the wine trade, is more concerned with the development of her industries than with her historical monuments; consequently, when a new Post Office was needed, the authorities came to the conclusion that a castle so centrally situate must go.[169] It went: but its memories remain. Its story is that of the final struggle between Burgundy and France, between Charles le Téméraire and Louis XI., respective champions of the old order and the new.[169] These rivals were not well matched. It was the unequal combat of the matador against the bull. Charles, though a prince of great charm and ability, endowed with the dual qualities of scholar and general, was still but a man of his time. If he possessed the virtues of the middle ages--courage, daring, resolution,--he shared also its defects--pride, obstinacy, shortsightedness, boundless ambition, and a touch, perhaps, of the hereditary insanity of the House of Valois. Dreams of more than feudal glory, of empire, even, dazzled him. His father had been "Philip the Good"; the son should be Alexander the Great. "Si grand et si puissant qu'il put être conducteur et meneur des autres." He would re-establish in greater glory, with wider bounds, the ancient Kingdom of Burgundy. And France! He reckoned without France. It was not within the power of this man to fathom nor to play move for move against such an opponent as Louis. He had held the king in his grasp once,[170] and had let him go. The opportunity would never recur. Patient, untiring Louis, touched, just as his rival was, with insanity, endowed with more than the common cunning of his type, possessed a mind as modern, almost, in essentials, as was that of Bacon half a century later. He foresaw clearly enough the coming death of feudalism, and, while waiting wolf-like, to prey upon the corpse, he bent his mind to the wider constructive processes of a subtler, more Machiavellian policy.