‘O, my lords! weigh well this treason, and apply a remedy to it. Consider how strongly the faith and loyalty of chivalry should be guarded and the words of Vegetius, when speaking of chivalry, ‘Milites jurata sua omnia custodiant.’ To the observance of this, all princes are bound,—for he who shall disgrace his loyalty or honour is unworthy of being called a knight.
‘My fourth argument is founded on this consideration, that the death of my late lord, the duke of Orleans, was damnable and disloyal,—and any one who should maintain or assert the contrary would not be a good Christian. We see that the secular justice allows to malefactors time for repentance,—but thou, cruel adversary! thou hast caused my lord so suddenly to be put to death that, inasmuch as in thee lay, he died without repenting of his sins. It seems, therefore, that thou hast exerted all thy influence to procure the eternal damnation of his soul when thou destroyedst his body; and most assuredly thou wilt find great difficulty to make thy peace with God,—for insomuch as thou believest him the greater sinner, so much the more need had he, as thou mayst suppose, of a fuller and longer repentance.—It follows, then, that thou hast deprived him, to the utmost of thy power, of any possibility of repentance,—and consequently thy sin becomes the more grievous and inexcuseable, more especially as my lord was no way expecting to die when he was thus suddenly and cruelly cut off.—Nevertheless, I trust that our Lord may have granted that he died in his grace; and I the more readily believe it, inasmuch as, a short time before this sad event, he had most devoutly confessed himself.
‘I repeat, that it is the deed of a wicked Christian thus to put a man to death; and whoever may say the contrary, or maintain that it is meritorious, I tell him, that he speaks wickedly and erroneously, according to the theologians.
‘Hear, my lords, and consider the conduct of our adversary after the death of the duke of Orleans,—how on the Thursday following his murder, clothed in black, and with tears and every sign of grief, he accompanied the dead body from the church of the Guillemins to that of the Celestins! Weigh well, my lords, this treachery and dissimulation! O Lord God, what tears and groans!!! O, Earth! how couldst thou bear such wickedness? Open thy mouth, and swallow up all who commit such dreadful sins.