On the 29th of February, 1392, a grand fête was held in the palace of Queen Blanche, given in honour of the marriage of the Chevalier Vermandois to one of her Majesty’s maids of honour. The King, Charles the Sixth, who had been for some time in a melancholy state of mind which sometimes amounted to madness, was for the time being enjoying a lucid interval, and was induced to enter into a frolic which was proposed by one of his favourite courtiers by the name of Hugonin de Janzay. It was arranged that in this masquerade the King and five of his lords should take part. “It was,” says Juvenal des Ursins, “a _momerie_ of savage men, heavily chained and dressed in _justes au corps_ made of linen which had been greased and covered with hairs, and which was made to fit close to the body.” Froissart, who was an eyewitness of this fête, says that “the six actors in the dance rushed into the ball-room howling and shaking their clattering chains.” As no one was able to recognize the hairy monsters, so well were they disguised, the Duc d’Orleans, the King’s brother, seized a lighted torch from the hands of an attendant, and pressed it so closely against one of these strange people that the light set fire to the linen coat, which blazed up immediately. By great good fortune the King had become separated from his companions, all of whom with only one exception were roasted alive. This lucky chevalier rushed from the room, and flung himself head first into a vat full of water and thus saved his life. Charles indeed escaped; but the horrors of the situation, combined with the terror, fatigue, and grief to which it gave rise, so impressed his already enfeebled mind that he became hopelessly insane. The Ballet des Ardents left such a vivid impression on the public mind that sixty years later a German engraver made it the subject of a print, so that it is not hazarding an inadmissible guess to fancy that a card-maker of the day should seize upon it for a subject, particularly as the cards of the period were sometimes decorated like the horrible Dance of Death, as if they were intended to awaken in the mind of the roystering player some thoughts which might lead him to dwell on more serious subjects, and by means of the cards to reach persons who might otherwise never be drawn to think of them.