Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign, Charles VII. was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. In 1442 and 1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite, Agnes Sorel. His avowed intimacy with Agnes, and even, independently of her and after her death, the scandalous licentiousness of his morals, had justly offended his virtuous wife, Mary of Anjou, the only lady of the royal establishment who survived him. She had brought him twelve children, and the eldest, the _dauphin_ Louis, after having from his very youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth in 1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St. Louis, and in hopes that he would resemble him. In 1440, at seventeen years of age, he allied himself with the great lords, who were displeased with the new military system established by Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by them into the transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. When the king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favor, the _dauphin_ said to his father, “My lord, I must go back with them, then; for so I promised them.” “Louis,” replied the king, “the gates are open, and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you.” Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of France that, coming one day upon the poet Alan Chartier asleep upon a bench, she kissed him on the forehead in the presence of her mightily astonished train, for he was very ugly. The _dauphin_ rendered his wife so wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with these words upon her lips: “O! fie on life! Speak to me no more of it!” In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to drive the English out of Normandy, the _dauphin_ Louis, who was now living entirely in Dauphiny, concluded at Briancon a secret league with the Duke of Savoy “against the ministers of the King of France, his enemies.” In 1456, in order to escape from the perils brought upon him by the plots which he, in the heart of Dauphiny, was incessantly hatching against his father, Louis fled from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the same time excusing himself to Charles VII. “on the ground of the respect he owed to the son of his suzerain,” and putting at the disposal of Louis, “his guest,” a pension of thirty-six thousand livres. “He has received the fox at his court,” said Charles: “he will soon see what will become of his chickens.” But the pleasantries of the king did not chase away the sorrows of the father. “Mine enemies have full trust in me,” said Charles, “but my son will have none. If he had but once spoken with me, he would have known full well that he ought to have neither doubts nor fears. On my royal word, if he will but come to me, when he has opened his heart and learned my intentions, he may go away again whithersoever it seems good to him.” Charles, in his old age and his sorrow, forgot how distrustful and how fearful he himself had been. “It is ever your pleasure,” wrote one of his councillors to him in a burst of frankness, “to be shut up in castles, wretched places, and all sorts of little closets, without showing yourself and listening to the complaints of your poor people.” Charles VII. had shown scarcely more confidence to his son than to his people. Louis yielded neither to words, nor to sorrows of which proofs were reaching him nearly every day. He remained impassive at the Duke of Burgundy’s, where he seemed to be waiting with scandalous indifference for the news of his father’s death. Charles sank into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. He had his doctor, Adam Fumee, put in prison; persuaded himself that his son had wished, and was still wishing, to poison him; and refused to take any kind of nourishment. No representation, no solicitation, could win him from his depression and obstinacy. It was in vain that Charles, Duke of Berry, his favorite child, offered to first taste the food set before him.