The rest reads like romance and yet is history. De Clisson received from the duke of Brittany, from the man who had plotted his assassination, a message offering reconciliation, and inviting him to a personal interview. The constable was not to be caught with chaff. He answered that he would come provided the duke’s eldest son was put in his hands as a hostage. To his astonishment the boy, the heir of the Montforts, was sent to him. The meeting took place, and John de Montfort and Oliver de Clisson were friends ever after; and years later when the duke went to Paris to marry this boy to the king’s daughter, he left de Clisson in charge of his domains and his household. These were the days of the _Great Schism_, the days of two rival popes Urban VI. and Clement VII. and the division of Christendom into two factions, the Urbanists and the Clementists. (See Captivity of Babylon.) The king had displayed some excellent and even brilliant qualities; and his sudden insanity drew forth expressions of sympathy from all parts of Europe. As to its cause opinions differed. The clergy of England and Flanders who were Urbanists, preached that it was because the king upheld the schismatic pope of Avignon; the clergy of France and Spain who were Clementists, that it was because the king had not invaded Italy and deposed the schismatic pope of Rome. The laity were convinced that the king was bewitched, and they even pointed out the wicked persons who had done it. Among these was the duchess Valentina whom the king regarded with brotherly affection. The evidence against her was that she was an Italian: were not all the Italians sorcerers and necromancers? Hermits and other holy men far and near were summoned to exorcise the king and cast the devil out of him. One cross-grained philosopher, half ecclesiastic half physician, with a scepticism that did not belong to the fourteenth century, maintained that Charles was neither bewitched nor bedevilled; that the schism had nothing to do with it; that the clergy were a pack of fools and the people brute beasts; that it was simply a case of mental breaking-down from over excitement and dissipation. The Church had received such rough handling from Philip-the-fair, that it dared not interfere; and this sciolist was left to flaunt his unbelief in the faces of the devout.