When the lad was already in his fourteenth year, the king summoned a great council in the spring time and said to the great lords and bishops there assembled, “I will, if it is your will, that my son be crowned at Rheims, and allegiance sworn to him by all while yet his father lives, as is the custom of our House, and this on the Assumption of this very year.” This was the year 1179. For he felt his age coming upon him, though he was but in his sixtieth year. Already had he feared paralysis, and known the symptoms of its coming. His council acclaimed him and his will. As the Feast of the Assumption drew near, which is also the memory of Roncesvalles, the 15th of August, Louis, the king, came with all his Court to the castle of Compiègne, on the edge of the great woods, there to stay till they should set out on the two days’ march to Rheims, and the young prince, Philip, was with him. But just in the days before this journey was due, the prince went out one morning with his men to hunt the boar in the forest at the gates of the castle. They gave him a swift horse, perhaps too mettlesome, and he rode out with his men in the morning, with their hounds and their horns, till, in the depths of this high wood, they unleashed, and next found a great boar; and him they pursued, scattering round, by this narrow path and that, through the thick undergrowth, and making round by the right and the left to come up with the hounds at last when they should pull the great boar down. But as his horse went furiously, and got off too far from the rest, the prince heard the horns more faintly, and, when he tried to rally to them, took false turnings, till at last he heard them no more. Then he knew that he was lost. He had not eaten, and the day was done, and he became afraid. Before it was dark he checked his tired mount and stood in doubt, looking all around and seeing nothing in the woods nor hearing any sound of men. Then he prayed to Our Lady and his Lord St. Denis, who is the strong protector of the Kings of France, that he might be saved out of the high wood; and looking round again to his right, he saw in the gloaming a charcoal burner, rough and forbidding, all grimy with his trade, and bearing on his shoulder an axe. The child was frightened at that figure; but he took it for a sign, and summoning his courage he walked his horse up to the charcoal burner and accosted him very courteously, and told him that he was the Son of France lost in the high wood, and in peril, and weak with long fasting. This story the man believed, and he led the prince by ways he knew all through the miles of forest in the darkness, till, by morning, they had come to the castle of Compiègne, and the prince was delivered safe to his father. But the strain had thrown the boy into a fever, and it seemed he would die. Thus for the second time was the line of France in peril, and King Louis near despair.