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 without reserve, sparing neither sister, mother, nor queen.

Yet it was a sombre court.  “Farewell dames, citizens, demoiselles, feasts, dances, jousts, and tournaments; farewell fair and gracious maids, mundane pleasures, joys, and games,” says Martial d’Auvergne.  Pompous magnificence may have reminded Louis unpleasantly of his visit to Burgundy.

[Footnote 1:  He had departed with Adolph de la Marck on November 19th.—­Archives du Nord.  See Du Fresne de Beaucourt, vi., 113.  No mention of this seems to appear elsewhere.]

[Footnote 2:  Chastellain (iii., 233) says that he heard the story from the clerk of the chapel, sole witness of this family quarrel.  The duke was so angry that it was hideous to see him.]

[Footnote 3:  La Marche, ii., 418; Du Clercq, ii., 237; Chastellain, iii., 230, etc.  In the last the narrative is more elaborate.  The author dwells much on the danger to the young countess in her delicate state of health.]