lf was badly bred, knock-kneed, and bandy-legged;[576] a
veritable king's son, if his looks only were considered, and yet it
was impossible to swear to his descent.[577] Through his presence on
the bridge at Montereau on that day, when, according to a wise man, it
were better to have died than to have been there,[578] he had grown
pale and trembling, looking dully at everything going to wrack and
ruin around him. After their victory of Verneuil and their partial
conquest of Maine, the English had left him four years' respite. But
his friends, his defenders, his deliverers had alike been terrible.
Pious and humble, well content with his plain wife, he led a sad,
anxious life in his chateaux on the Loire. He was timid. And well
might he be so, for no sooner did he show friendship towards or
confidence in one of the nobility than that noble was killed. The
Constable de Richemont and the Sire de la Tremouille had drowned the
Lord de Giac after a mock trial.[579] The Marshal de Boussac, by
order of the Constable, had slain Lecamus de Beaulieu with even less
ceremony. Lecamus was riding his mule in a meadow on the bank of the
Clain, when he was set upon, thrown down, his head split open, and his
hand cut off. The favourite's mule was taken back to the King.[580]
The Constable de Richemont had given Charles in his stead La
Tremouille, a very barrel of a man, a toper, a kind of Gargantua who
devoured the country. La Tremouille having driven away Richemont, the
King kept La Tremouille until the Constable, of whom he was greatly in
dread, should return. And indeed so meek and fearful a prince had
reason to dread this Breton, always defeated, always furious, bitter,
ferocious, whose awkwardness and violence created an impression of
rude frankness.[581]

[Footnote 573: _Ibid._, p. 56.]

[Footnote 574: Bueil, _Le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. 32, and Tringant, xv;
Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, ch. cxxxviii.]

[Footnote 575: Vallet de Viriville, _Isabeau de Baviere_, 1859, in
8vo, and _Notes sur l'etat civil des princes et princesses nes
d'Isabeau de Baviere_ in the _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_,
vol. xix, pp. 473-482.]

[Footnote 576: Th. Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_,
vol. i, p. 312. Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. ii, p.
178.]

[Footnote 577: _Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis_, vol. i, pp.
28, 43. Docteur A. Chevreau, _De la maladie de Charles VI, roi de
France, et des medecins qui ont soig