Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/301

Rh vivid realism are too often drowned in the flood of flowery phrases and stilted terms.

Only, when Chastellain describes an event which grips his visualizing mind, he evinces an imaginative strength, which makes him very interesting. He has no more ideas than his contemporaries and colleagues; his arsenal, like theirs, is stocked with nothing but moral, pious and chivalrous commonplaces; his speculations never go below the surface. But his powers of observation are remarkably keen and his descriptions very lively.

The portrait he drew of Duke Philip has all the vigour of a Van Eyck. He delights in the description of scenes of action and passion, displaying a degree of true and simple realism which would have made this chronicler an excellent novelist. Take, for instance, his narrative of a quarrel between the duke and his son Charles, which took place in 1457. His visual perception is nowhere so vivid as here; all the outward circumstances of the event are rendered with perfect clearness. A few rather long quotations are indispensable.

The difference arose in connection with a vacancy in the household of the young count of Charolais. The old duke wanted, contrary to his promise, to give the place to a member of the family of Croy, then in high favour. Charles, who did not share his father’s feelings for that family, had destined it for one of his friends.

“Le duc donques par un lundy qui estoit le jour Saint-Anthoine, après sa messe, aiant bien désir que sa maison demorast paisible et sans discention entre ses serviteurs, et que son fils aussi fist par son conceil et plaisir, après que jà avoit dit une grant part de ses heures et que la cappelle estoit vuide de gens, il appela son fils à venir vers luy et lui dist doucement: ‘Charles de l’estrif qui est entre les sires de Sempy et de Hémeries pour le lieu de chambrelen, je vueil que vous y mettez cès et que le sire de Sempy obtiengne le lieu vacant.’ Adont dist le conte: ‘Monseigneur, vous m’avez baillié une fois vostre ordonnance en laquelle le sire de Sempy n’est point, et monseigneur, s’il vous plaist, je vous prie que ceste-là je la puisse garder.’—‘Déa,’ ce dit le duc lors, ‘ne vous chailliez des ordonnances, c’est à moy à croistre et à diminuer, je vueil que le sire de Sempy y soit mis’—‘Hahan!’ ce dist le conte (car