In this year 1429, Charles the Dauphin was holding in Chinon his shadowy court. This deplorable prince, a king of shreds and patches, if ever one lived, was now twenty-seven years old, and had never done anything in particular except to pursue pleasure and to escape danger. Accounts differ as to his personal appearance. Monstrelêt, his contemporary, calls him "a handsome prince, and handsome in speech with all persons, and compassionate toward poor folk"; but is constrained to add "he did not readily put on his harness, and he had no heart for war if he could do without it." Another chronicler gives a less favorable account of his appearance. "He was very ugly, with small gray wandering eyes; his nose was thick and bulbous, his legs bony and bandy; his thighs emaciated, with enormous knock-knees." Yet another dwells on his physical advantages, and his kindness of manner, which won the favor of the people. It does not greatly matter now what he looked like. When a flame springs up and lights the sky, we do not scrutinize the match that struck out the spark. There he was at Chinon, surrounded by courtiers and favorites (chief among them La Trémoïlle, "the evil genius of king and country") amusing himself as best he might. "Never a king lost his kingdom so gaily!" said La Hire. One of Joan's biographers[28] says of him: "Weak in body and mind, idle, lazy, luxurious, and cowardly, he was naturally the puppet of his worst courtiers, and the despair of those who hoped for reform"; and he quotes the burning words addressed by Juvenal des Ursins to his master, when king of France: "How many times have poor human creatures come to you to bewail the grievous extortion practiced upon them! Alas, well might they cry, 'Why sleepest thou, O Lord!' But they could arouse neither you nor those about you." Charles was not always gay: he was subject to fits of deep depression, when he despaired of crown and kingdom, questioning even his right to either. Son of a mad father and a bad mother, was he indeed the rightful heir? In these moods he would leave his parasite court and weep and pray apart. A pitiable creature, altogether. Word was brought to Charles on a day that a young maid was at the gate, asking to see him; a maid in man's attire, riding astride a horse and five men-at-arms with her. Here was a strange matter! Charles had heard nothing of maids or missions. While he debated the matter with La Trémoïlle (to whom, by the way, he had pledged Chinon for whatever it would bring) and the rest, came a letter from the Maid herself, dictated by her and sent on before, but delayed or neglected till now. She asked permission to enter his town of Chinon, for she had ridden one hundred and fifty leagues to tell him "things useful to him and known to her."[29] She would recognize him, she said, among all others.