In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I
have thought him less than a king!"
You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of
herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like
card-houses. Every rumor of defeat--and the news of some fresh defeat
came daily--was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's
knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot,
outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and
Pisidice and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for
Judith's nobler guilt.
In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English
met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked
out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river
Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and
Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English
King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and
Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick.
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