their new monarch. "Our king," says
De Comines, "used to dress so ill that worse could not be--often
wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it."
When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the
people said "_Benedicite!_ is that a king of France? Why, his horse
and clothes together are not worth twenty francs!" and a Venetian
ambassador was amazed to see the most mighty and most Christian king
take his dinner in a tavern on the market-place of Tours, after
hearing mass in the cathedral. The citizens remembered, too, his
refusal to accord them some privileges granted to other cities; they
were sullen at first and would not be wooed. The university declined
to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle,
vagabond _clercs_ of the Palais and the Cite composed coarse gibes and
satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set
himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the
Parisians. He supped with the provost and sheriffs and their wives at
the Hotel de Ville. He chose six members from the burgesses, six from
the Parlement and six from the university, to form his Council, and
with daring confidence, decided to arm Paris. A levy of every male
able to bear arms between sixteen and sixty years of age was made, and
the citizen army was reviewed near St. Antoine des Champs, in the
presence of the king and queen. From 60,000 to 80,000 men, half of
them well-armed, marched past, with sixty-seven banners of the trades
guilds, not counting those of the municipal officers, the Parlement
and the university. The nobles were checkmated, and they were glad to
accede to a treaty which gave them ample spoils, and Louis, time to
recover himself. The "Public Good" was barely mentioned.

Louis, when at Paris, refused to occupy the Louvre and chose to dwell
in the new Hotel des Tournelles, near the Porte St. Antoine, built for
the Duke of Bedford and subsequently presented to Louis when Dauphin
by his royal father; for thither a star led him one evening as he left
Notre Dame. Often would he issue _en bourgeois_ from the Tournelles to
sup with his gossips in Paris and scarcely a day passed without the
king being seen at mass in Notre Dame.

"When King Louis," says De Comines, "retired from the interview[97]
with Edward IV. of England, he spake with me by the way and said he
found the English king too ready to visit Paris, which thing was not