These bears were more than characteristic of the extravagance of the time; they were symbolical of the spirit that, possessing France in the closing years of the thirteenth century, departed only before the exorcisms of La Pucelle. The wise and noble kings, Edward IV. of England, and Charles V. of France, had given place to a dullard and a madman; and the people, no less than the princes, had lost their reason. The feudal system was passing, had passed; and no new political nor social order had as yet developed in its place. Nobles of the day, looking back upon the monkish régime and the early chivalry, could only ape and burlesque the outward splendours of the movements whose inward spirit and ideals they were wholly incapable of understanding. It seemed that God, even, to borrow Luther's phrase, weary of the game, had thrown his cards upon the table. Such is the significance of the bear upon Philip's mantle. Everywhere ranged these strange and uncouth beasts. They grinned in long lines from the eaves of the Churches; with a thousand other fantastic fancies of disordered imaginations, they met the eye, at every turn, in corridors of royal palaces, in the reception rooms of baronial halls. Foul jests and foul shapes leered at the passer-by from the fringes of a scarlet skirt. On a high dame's rustling sleeve, whose folds swept the ground, were set the notes of a song; rich doublets blazed with lewd figures, or with strange symbols, improper, if well understood. Great ladies, wearing long horns upon their heads, jested with lords whose pointed toes wriggled up into serpent shapes. Art, sanity, religion were no longer at one. All the pure and natural ornament of early Gothic work, filched from church and cathedral for the service of base needs, flaunted, in horrible disguise, in houses of pleasure and ill fame.[148] Small wonder that distracted souls, searching in thick darkness for guidance, for God, and not finding him in life, turned, at last, in despair, to the great negations, Death and the Devil. God had failed them; evil, at least, shall not fail them. In a frenzy of false joy they danced the "danse des morts" in the cemeteries of Paris.[149] [Illustration: ·AT THE CAFE·] Their dear king Charles, even, so beloved of a mad people, was not less mad than they. Save for occasional lucid intervals, he was a "fou furieux." "It was great pity, this malady of the king, which held him for long seasons, and when he ate it was very gluttonously and wolfishly. And he could not be persuaded to strip himself, and was full of lice, vermin, and filth. And he had a little piece of iron that he put secretly close to his flesh. Of which nothing was known. And it had rotted all his poor flesh, and no-one durst go near him to remedy it.