ing their throats cut in the
country, the others were feasting in the cities. The sound of the
violins was not interrupted by that of the trumpets, and there could be
heard at the same time the voices of those singing in the balls, and the
pitiful cries of those who perished in the flames or under the edge of
the sword."

Another chronicler, Robert Gaguin, writing in the fifteenth century,
dilates on the constant changes in the Parisian fashions in 1346. "In
those times, the garments differed very much from each other. When you
saw the manner in which the French clothed themselves, you would have
taken them for mountebanks. Sometimes the vestments which they adopted
were too large, sometimes they were too narrow; at one period they were
too long, at another, too short. Always eager for novelties, they could
not retain for ten years the same style of apparel."

[Illustration: LOUIS XVI ON THE LEADS OF THE TEMPLE.

After an engraving of the period.]

Jean II succeeded his father Philippe in 1350, and has preserved his
surname of le Bon, or the Good, though his reign was one of the most
disastrous in history. One of his very first acts was to cause the
arrest, in the Hotel de Nesle, of Raoul, Comte d'Eu, Constable of
France, whom he accused of high treason, and, without any form of law,
had him beheaded at night in the presence of the Duc de Bourbon, the
Comte d'Armagnac, the Comte de Montfort, and several other high
personages of the court. All his property was confiscated, his comte was
given to the king's cousin, Jean d'Artois, and the king kept the rest.
In the following year he founded an order of knighthood, in imitation of
that of the Garter, established by Edward III in England, and which, in
its turn, served as a model for that of the _Toison d'Or_, the Golden
Fleece, instituted in 1439 by the Duke of Burgundy. King Jean gave to
his order the name of _Notre-Dame de la Noble maison_, but it was more
generally known as that of _l'Etoile_, the Star. According to
Froissart, it was "a company after the manner of the Round Table, which
should be constituted of three hundred of the most worthy chevaliers."
They took an oath never to flee in battle more than four arpents,--about
four hundred perches,--and there to die or to yield themselves
prisoners; the king gave them for a residence the royal lodging of
Saint-Ouen, near Paris. "True chivalry was departing, since the kings
endeavored to create an official chivalry."