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By Root 1456 0

to himself, so that he was accused of being subtle and secret. He had recovered from the severe headaches, toothaches, dyspepsia, and other ailments which afflicted him during his regency, but still suffered from a malady—perhaps gout—of the right hand or arm and a mysterious fistula and abscess of the left arm, probably from tuberculosis, but supposed to be the result of the attempt by Charles of Navarre to poison him in 1358. A learned physician from Prague, sent to him by his uncle the Emperor, treated the poison, but told him that if ever the abscess should cease oozing, Charles would die after fifteen days in which he would have time to settle his affairs and attend to his soul. Not surprisingly, the King lived under a sense of urgency.

As a man of inquiring mind, interested in cause and effect, and in philosophy, science, and literature, he formed one of the great libraries of his age, which was installed in the Louvre, where he maintained a second residence. The library’s rooms were paneled in carved and decorated cypress, stained-glass windows were screened by iron wire against “birds and other beasts,” and a silver lamp was kept burning all night so that the King could read at any time. Not knowledge only but the spread of knowledge concerned him. He commissioned Nicolas Oresme, a learned councillor of advanced and scientific mind, to explain the theory of stable currency in simple language; it was this kind of statecraft that earned him the title of Charles le Sage (the Wise). He commissioned translations into French of Livy, Aristotle, and Augustine’s City of God “for the public utility of the realm and all Christendom,” and owned many other classics, works of the church fathers, and Arab scientific treatises in French translation. The library was eclectic, ranging from Euclid, Ovid, Seneca, and Josephus to John of Salisbury, the Roman de la Rose, and a then current best seller, Sir John Mandeville’s Travels. It contained the various 13th century encyclopedias of universal knowledge, a collection of works on the crusades and on astrology and astronomy, 47 Arthurian and other romances, codes, commentaries and grammars, works of philosophy, theology, contemporary poetry, and satire—in all, according to an inventory of 1373, over 1,000 volumes, ultimately the nucleus of the national library of France. When reproached for spending too much time with books and clerks, Charles answered, “As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.”

His three brothers were all compulsively acquisitive: Louis d’Anjou, eldest of the three, for money and a kingdom; Jean de Berry for art; Philip of Burgundy for power. Tall, robust, and blond like his father, Anjou was headstrong, vain, and driven by insatiable ambition. Berry, sensual and pleasure-loving, was the supreme collector, whose square common pug-nosed face and thick body consorted oddly with his love of art. Philip of Burgundy had Berry’s coarse heavy features but greater intelligence and an overweening pride. Each put his own interests above the kingdom’s, each was given to conspicuous consumption to enhance and display his prestige, and each was to produce through his patronage works of art unsurpassed of their kind: the Apocalypse series of tapestries made for Anjou, the Très Riches Heures and Belles Heures illuminated for Berry by the brothers Limbourg, and the statues of the Well of Moses and the Mourners sculpted by Claus Sluter for Burgundy.

Never did princely magnificence display itself more noticeably than on two occasions in 1368–69 in which Coucy shared. His brother-in-law, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a widower and father at 29, came to Paris in April 1368 on his way to Milan to marry Violante Visconti, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Galeazzo.* Accompanied by a retinue of 457 persons and 1,280 horses (perhaps the extras were for gifts), he was lodged in a suite especially decorated for him at the Louvre. His sister, the Dame de Coucy, and Enguerrand came to Paris to meet him and to join in the feasts and honors with which the King and