'Joab,' had thundered John Petit in his famous glorification of the Duke of Burgundy, '_Joab a répandu le sang de la guerre au milieu de la paix: sa viellesse ne descendra pas paisiblement dans la tombe_,' and in the light of after events the words of the notorious friar seem almost prophetic. On the 10th of September 1419, some twelve years after the murder of the Duke of Orléans, John the Fearless was himself slain on French soil. It happened thus. About a month previous to this date, John had requested an interview with the Dauphin, who was now chief of the Orléanist party, with a view to concluding peace. After some hesitation, the latter had consented, and on the 14th of August, on the bridge of Montereau-Faut-Yonne, the meeting took place. During the discussion which ensued, words ran high, and presently the spectators on either bank of the Seine observed that the men on the bridge were struggling. For a moment they suspected foul play, and a cry went up that the Dauphin had been slain, but it was not the Dauphin but John himself whom the crowd had seen hurled to the ground, and the figure bending over him, and perhaps essaying to staunch his wounds, was no other than that of Guillaume le Bouteille, once servant to Philippe d'Orléans. 'As thou didst serve my master,' muttered the old man, as he hacked off the dead Duke's hand, 'as thou didst serve my master even so do I now serve thee.' But the crowd on the banks heard not his words, and wist not what he was doing. Was John the victim of his cousin's treachery, or had he at length been taken in his own net? In a word, was he slain by the Dauphin in self-defence? Such the latter averred to be the case, and there is this much in favour of his assertion--Juvenal des Ursins, the most reliable and impartial historian of his century, gives credence to it. So too Olivier of Dixmude, who relates the following anecdote:-- One night, towards the hour of matins, about a month after Philippe's murder, whilst the Duke of Burgundy was staying at Ypres, a strange and lurid light appeared in the air over the cloister of St. Martin, where he was lodged. Thither ran a host of citizens from all quarters of the town, thinking that the place was on fire, but they soon perceived the true cause thereof--a dragon hovering over the Duke's chamber, which suddenly turned his flaming dart on himself and so disappeared, and, Olivier adds, even thus did John the Fearless die--in a plot of his own hatching. When in the year 1408 Duke John the Fearless, glorying in the crime he had committed, and vaunting it as an act of virtue, was heaping wealth and favours on the shameless friar who, as he cynically avowed, for gold and the hope of more gold had made himself his apologist, there was one man who ventured to lift up his voice in protest; this man was Jean de Gerson, erst chaplain to Philip the Hardy, and since 1394 Dean of the great Collegiate Church of St. Donatian's at Bruges.