Of course, these tidings produced a great excitement all over France. King Louis XI. was specially interested in them, as they afforded a hope that Margaret might regain her throne, and so be able to redeem her mortgage, or else deliver up to him the security; so he called a council at Tours to consider what was best to be done, and he sent for Margaret at Verdun to come with the prince and attend it. He also sent for René, her father, and other influential family friends. It is said that when Margaret arrived and met her father, she was so much agitated by the news, and by the hopes which it awakened in her bosom, that, in embracing him, she burst into tears from the excess of her excitement and joy.
[Sidenote: Reconciliation with Warwick proposed.]
But she could not endure the idea of a reconciliation with Warwick. At first she positively refused to see or to speak to him. When, however, at length he arrived at Tours, the king introduced him into Margaret's presence, but for a long time she refused to have any thing to do with him.
"She could never forgive him," she said. "He had been the chief author of the downfall of her husband, and of all the sorrows and calamities which had since befallen her and her son.
"Besides," she said, "even if she were willing to forgive him for the intolerable wrongs which he had inflicted upon her, it would be very prejudicial to her husband's cause to enter into any agreement or alliance with him whatever; for all her party and friends in England, whom Warwick had done so much to injure, and who had so long looked upon him as their worst and deadliest foe, would be wholly alienated from her if they were to know that she had taken him into favor, and thus she would lose much more than she would gain."
Warwick replied to this as well as he could, pleading the injuries which he had himself received from the Lancaster party as an excuse for his hostility against them. Then, moreover, he had been the means of unsettling King Edward in his realm, and of preparing the way for King Henry to return; and he promised that, if Margaret would receive him into her service, he would thenceforth be true and faithful to her as long as he lived, and be as much King Edward's foe as he had hitherto been his friend. He appealed, moreover, to the King of France to be his surety that he would faithfully perform these stipulations.