“Yes, insane. He had a few lucid moments after 1392, in which he recognized in some measure the profligacy of the administration. The whole royal family, with but few exceptions, acted as if they were insane. First of all, there was the Queen, the notorious Isabella of Bavaria, who was as much a stranger to the nobility of human nature as she was to the divine. Her every purpose and act had no higher motive than the gratification of her own desires and the discovery how to accomplish them. It would have mattered nothing to her if a sea of blood had been shed, if only her interests were advanced. There was the Duke Louis of Orleans,[9] brother of the insane King, who pandered to Isabella’s profligacy and lust of power, finally seized the reins of sovereignty, and plunged the state into direst confusion. There were the King’s uncles, the dukes of Bourbon, Berry, Burgundy, and Anjou, all alike avaricious and ambitious for power, who lashed the Duke of Orleans and the King with the scourge of war, murdered their subjects, and ravaged the country. Then came numerous factions which contended with one another, one for this, and one for that, and finally almost countless great and little lords, robber barons, who, pretending to espouse the cause of one party, harried the districts of others, leaving a trail of pillage and blood. To complete the burden of wretchedness, King Henry the Fifth sent his Englishmen, those hereditary enemies of France, across the Channel. In alliance with the turbulent dukes, particularly those of Burgundy and Brittany, they advanced victorious, captured one place after another, and at last even Rouen and Paris, so that few provinces were left to the unfortunate King. Frightful confusion followed when this King died in 1422. Henry the Fifth, to be sure, died in the same year, but his field marshal, the Duke of Bedford, guardian of young Henry the Sixth,[10] did not abandon the field. The infamous treaty of Troyes gave him the semblance of right.” “How so, holy father?” interposed one of the villagers. “Be quiet,” replied another. “You ought to have known that Queen Isabella, out of hate and revenge against her youngest son Charles, who, after the death of his brother the Dauphin, was crown prince, concluded that treaty with England whereby the French royal family was barred from the succession and the King of England was declared successor of Charles the Sixth.” “Oh, the disgrace! Oh, the shame!” several exclaimed. “And this poor Dauphin,” continued the former speaker, “spent a joyless youth, in which his unnatural mother often forced him as well as his father to suffer the pangs of hunger; and yet, poor, weak, and throneless as he is, he is still ready to struggle for that throne which is his birthright as Charles the Seventh. Is this not so, holy father?”