Of all the dying speeches and confessions of kings to their family and their councillors, that which has just been put forward is the most practical, precise, and simple.  Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first as king’s lieutenant and as dauphin, and afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and preventing any repetition.  No sovereign was ever more resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes which led to them.  But without being a warrior, and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies.  “Never was there king,” said Edward III., “who handled arms less, and never was there king who gave me so much to do.”  When the condition of the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circumstances led Charles to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and, after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been afflicted.  At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days.  Nor the labors of government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted themselves thereto.  The University of Paris, notwithstanding the embarrassments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his good-will.  “He was a great lover of wisdom,” says Christine de Pisan, “and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he answered, ’So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.’” He collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his personal attendant, Gilles de Presle.  His taste for literature and science was not confined to collecting manuscripts.  He had a French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Augustine.  He was fond of industry and the arts as well as of literature.  Henry de Vic, a German clock-maker, constructed for