N'importe.--Dans la nuit je vais. La nudité Du jour blessait mes yeux. L'ombre chaste est un voile. Ce flambeau, qu'il m'égare ou me guide, est clarté: L'Astre, même trompeur, est toujours une étoile. Trouverai-je en sa crèche, ainsi que dans un nid, Un enfant? Me mettrai-je à genoux? Que m'importe! J'ai recueilli la myrrhe et le baume bénit: Je respire en marchant les parfums que je porte. NOTES. The full-face figures refer to the pages; the ordinary figures to the lines. N.B. For the poets before MALHERBE the spelling has not been modernized. Some uniformity however has been sought, and accents are used when they affect final vowels. CHARLES D'ORLÉANS. 1391-1465. Father of Louis XII, was taken prisoner in the battle of Agincourt (1415) and passed the next twenty-five years of his life in captivity in England. In this long leisure he developed his talent for poetry, and on his return to France he made his residence at Blois a gathering-point for men of letters. His poetical work marks the utmost attainment in outward grace of expression in the treatment of conventional subjects in the traditional fixed forms. Now and then there is a more personal strain which suggests the more distinctly modern lyric of Villon; but he is not to be compared with Villon in originality of view, sincerity of feeling, or directness and intensity of utterance. His works were not published till the eighteenth century. The best edition is that of Ch. d'Héricault, 2 vols., 1874 (_Nouvelle collection Jannet-Picard_). Charles d'Orléans also wrote some of his poems in English; these were published by G. W. Taylor in 1827 for the Roxburghe Club. For reference : Constant Beaufils, _Étude sur la vie et les poésies de Charles d'Orléans_, 1861; Robert Louis Stevenson, _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_, London, 1882. 1. BALLADE. For the form of the _ballade_ see the remarks on versification, p. xxi. 2. ESTOYE, _étais_; for initial _e_ from _es_cf. _esveillera_, l. 14, _Esté_, 3, 8. 3. AVOIENT, _avaient_; in the imperfect and conditional _oi_, from an earlier _ei_, continued to be written till late in the eighteenth century, long after in pronunciation it had come to have the value of _ai_. 4. HAYENT, _haïssent_, _y_ is found frequently in the older spelling for _i_, especially when final. 5. DESCONFORT= _découragement_. 8. SI FAIS = _ainsi je fais_; the omission of the pronoun is common at this time; cf. 8, 24, _direz_. 10. NE ... NE = _ni ... ni_. GREVANCE = _dommage, malheur_. 14. ACCORT,_accord_. 16. SOYENT, _soient_; here of two syllables, in modern verse of one. 17. VEOIR, _voir_; here of two syllables. 22. SORT, _evil spell_. 24. LOING, _loin_.