d not attractive in
person. His eyes were piercing but his visage was made plain by a
disproportionate nose. His legs were thin and misshapen, his gait
uncertain. He dressed very simply, wearing an old pilgrim's hat,
ornamented by a leaden saint. As he rode into Abbeville in company
with Philip, the simple folk who had never seen the king were greatly
amazed at his appearance and said quite loud, "Benedicite! Is that a
king of France, the greatest king in the world? All together his horse
and dress are not worth twenty francs."[25]

From the beginning of his reign, Louis XI. never lived very long in
any one place. He did not like the Louvre as a dwelling and had
the palace of the Tournelles arranged for him. Touraine became by
preference his residence, where he lived alternately at Amboise and
in his new chateau at Plessis-les-Tours. But his sojourns were always
brief. He wanted to know everything, and he wandered everywhere to
see France and to seek knowledge. His letters, his accounts, the
chroniclers, the despatches of the Italian ambassador, show him on a
perpetual journey.

He would set out at break of day with five or six intimates dressed in
grey cloth like pilgrims; archers and baggage followed at a distance.
He would forbid any one to follow him, and often ordered the gates of
the city he had left to be closed, or a bridge to be broken behind
him. Ambassadors ordered to see him without fail, sometimes had to
cross France to obtain an interview, at least if their object was
something in which he was not much interested. Then he would often
grant them an audience in some miserable little peasant hut.

In the cities where he stopped he would lodge with a burgomaster or
some functionary. To avoid harangues and receptions he would often
arrive unannounced through a little alley. If forced to accept an
_entree_ he stipulated that it should not be marked with magnificence.
There never was a prince who so disliked ceremonies, balls, banquets,
and tourneys. At his court young people were bored to death. He never
ordered festivals except for some visitor; his pleasures were those
of a simple private gentleman. He liked to dine out of his palace.
Cagnola relates with surprise that he had seen the king dine after
mass in a tavern on the market-place at Tours. He invited small nobles
and bourgeois to dine with him. He was intimate, too, with bourgeois
women, and indulged in gross pleasantries, speaking to and of women
w