Troubles, however, were gathering thickly all over the devoted land of France. The enemy in the gate, ever victorious, plundered and pauperized every State in turn, so that the country was “like a sheep bleating helplessly before her shearers.” Tax-gatherers and oppressors of mankind beggared the poor and feeble, and spoiled the rich and brave. “_Sà de l’argent? Sà de l’argent?_”--“Where’s your money?”--was the desolating cry which the rough _cailloux_ of the village _pavé_ tossed through the draughty doorways of peasant cottages, and the smooth courtyards echoed through the mullioned windows of seigneurs’ castles. The gatherings, in spite of rape and rapine, fell far short of the requirements of these times of stress, and a general appeal was made to Queens and _châtelaines_ to exercise their charms in staying the hands of ravishers. The famous answer of Queen Isabeau was that, alas! of Queen Yolande, though more sympathetically expressed: “_Je suis une povre voix criant dans ce royaume, désireuse de paix et du bien de tous!_”[A] [A] “I am a poor voice crying helplessly in this wretched kingdom, seeking only peace and the good of all.” This aptly expressed the weary sense of disaster which saw that fateful year expire, but for the King and Queen of Sicily-Anjou-Provence a gleam of the brightness of Epiphany fell athwart their marital couch. Yolande was for the third time a mother, and her child was a boy. Born on January 6, 1408, in a crenellated tower of the castle gateway of Angers, his mother had to bear the anxiety and the vigil all alone, for Louis II. was in Italy fighting for his own. As before the birth of the Princess Marie devotions had been addressed to the Mother of God and to the saints for a favourable carriage, now, in view of the troubles of the land, special petitions were addressed to the most popular saint of Anjou, St. Renatus, that the new deliverance might presage a new birth of hope for France, and that the holy one,--the patron of child-bearing mothers who sought male heirs,--might supplicate at the throne of heaven for a baby-boy. Baptized in the Cathedral of St. Maurice eight days after birth, the little Prince had for sponsors no foreign potentates, but men of good renown and substance in Anjou: Pierre, Abbé de St. Aubin; Jean, Seigneur de l’Aigle; Guillaume, Chevalier des Roches; and Mathilde, Abbée de Nôtre Dame d’Angers. The Queen by proxy named her child “René--_reconnaissance à Messire St. Renatus_.” The Queen folded her little infant to her breast, but after weaning him she gave him over to the care of a faithful nurse, one Théophaine la Magine of Saumur, who came to love him, and he her, most tenderly.