On the 29th of January, 1392, there was a grand _fête_ at the mansion of Queen Blanche in honour of the marriage of a Chevalier de Vermandois with one of the queen’s ladies. The king, Charles VI., had only just recovered from his mental malady. One of his favourites, Hugonin de Janzay, projected an entertainment in which the king and five lords were to take a part. “It was,” says Juvénal des Ursins, “a masquerade of wild men chained together, and all shaggy; their dress was made to fit close to their body, and was rendered rough by flax and tow fastened on by resinous pitch, greased so as to shine the better.” Froissart, who was an eye-witness of this _fête_, says that the six actors in the _ballet_ entered the hall yelling and shaking their chains. As it was not known who these maskers were, the Duke of Orleans, brother of the king, wishing to find out, took a lighted torch from the hands of his servant, and held it so close to one of these strange personages that “the heat of the fire caught the flax.” The king was fortunately separated from his companions, who were all burned, with the exception of one only, who threw himself into a tub full of water. Although Charles VI. escaped from this peril, he was deeply affected by the thought of the danger to which he had been exposed, and the result was a relapse into his former insanity. This fearful _ballet des ardents_ left such an impression on the minds of people generally, that seventy years afterwards a German engraver made it the subject of a print. Should we, then, be venturing on an inadmissible hypothesis if we attribute to a cardmaker of this epoch the idea of introducing the same subject in a pack of cards? which, as is abundantly proved, was modified according to the whim of the artist. In order to justify the costume of a female savage and the torch, which are given to the “queen of hearts,” we must not forget that Isabel of Bavaria, consort of Charles VI., is accused of having assisted in devising this fatal masquerade, which was intended to get rid of the king; and of having taken as her accomplice the Duke of Orleans, her brother-in-law, who is said to have purposely set fire to the clothing of these pretended wild men, among whom was the king.