Charles was weak in body, and over him hung the sentence of death passed on him by the physicians in his youth. Charles the Bad, it was said, in return for his arrest at Rouen, had poisoned the dauphin’s food.[29] The prince escaped destruction by the opening of a perpetual wound in his left arm. “Whenever the sore heals over,” the doctors said, “the dauphin must die.” This issue was probably only a sign of a feeble constitution, but it silenced the sneers of his enemies, who were not accustomed to see a king except in armour; it doubled the respect of the few discerning potentates of the time, who began to perceive that a cabinet might be quite as great a scene of glory as a field of battle. Edward III said he was never so resisted in open fight, as by the calm, sagacious councillor who had never drawn a sword. Before the first year was over all men perceived that things were greatly changed. There were no tournaments at the Louvre--no feasts at the palace. The king lived like an anchorite, except on state occasions, when he outshone the magnificence of oriental princes; and paid his men-at-arms their wages, and granted privileges to the trading towns, and did not increase a single tax! People must have grown ashamed of sustaining the cause of Charles the Bad against so true a Frenchman and gracious a king as Charles the Wise; yet the war continued.[n] Charles V at first made use of the help of his brothers, committing to their hands the provinces most remote from the centre, Languedoc to the duke of Anjou, and Burgundy to Philip the Bold. He himself attended only to the centre; but he needed an arm--a sword. There was then hardly any military spirit except among the Bretons and the Gascons. The king attached to him a brave Breton of Dinan, the sieur Du Guesclin, whom he had himself seen at the siege of Melun, and who had been fighting for France for some years.[e] _Early Exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin_ The childhood of Bertrand du Guesclin offers some striking peculiarities. His ugliness, his deformity, and his rough, wild bearing had won for him the dislike of his family; the harsh treatment he endured only served to embitter his character. Armed with a stick, which he invariably carried, young Bertrand was a great trouble to his mother, and the terror of all the children in the neighbourhood. He could not be taught to read. “He knew nothing of letters,” says a chronicle, “and no masters could ever be found from whom he was willing to learn; but he always wanted to strike and beat them.”