"Without any doubt, I am crazy; but crazy with love for you, my Aloyse! But let us come back to King John, made prisoner at the battle of Poitiers. He is taken to England. He is received with chivalrous courtesy and unheard-of magnificence. A sumptuous palace is assigned to him for prison, and he is invited out to exquisite banquets. The handsomest girls of England are charged to watch him. The forests that are at his disposal teem with game; the fields are vast; the rivers limpid. Thus his time is divided between love, play, the table, fishing, hunting--until he dies of indigestion. While King John was thus peaceably enjoying life in England, what was his son doing, the unhappy Charles V? Driven out of Paris by a vile populace that rose in rebellion at the voice of Marcel, the unhappy Charles the Wise, as he was called, frightened out of his senses by the ferocities of the Jacquerie, beset by the bustle of royalty, broken with the fatigues of war, ever on horseback, ever sleeping on the hard ground, and never sleeping with both eyes shut, living on poor fare and on poorer love, rushing hither and thither over hill and dale, was ever out of breath running after his crown! By the glories of Easter! Do you call that 'wisdom'?" "He at least had the glory of re-conquering his crown, and indulged the pleasure of executing his enemies." "Oh, I well understand the happiness of revenge. I abominate those insolent Parisians, those chasers of kings. If I had that accursed town in my power, I would order the most inveterate Burgundians to be hanged. But I would be careful not to establish my residence there, out of fear of fresh seditions. Charles V revenged himself; he reigned, but at the price of what anxieties, torments and incessant civil wars! While his father, King John, was all the while living happily in England, surrounded by abundance and love! To want this, to oppose that in matters of public concern, are intellectual labors that I leave to the Sire of La Tremouille and his fellows of the royal council to rack their brains over. Without alarming myself over the future, my Aloyse, I allow the current to carry me, rocked in your arms. Whatever may happen, I laugh! Long live love!" "Oh, you do not speak like a King."