The voice of public opinion was still very feeble, but it could be heard. On the return from the sad war in Germany, the king called a general council in the hall of the palace of the archbishop of Rheims, and demanded of those present, in virtue of the obedience they owed him, their advice on the conduct of public affairs. Peter de Montaigu, cardinal of Laon, took the floor, and praising the king’s good qualities, exhorted him to begin the exercise of his absolute power by taking under his own control and direction the ministry of war and his own household, taking counsel from no one. Others supported the cardinal’s advice; Charles declared himself determined to follow it and thanked his uncles for the good offices they had rendered him. The king had scarcely left Rheims when the cardinal of Laon died by poison. [Sidenote: [1388-1389 A.D.]] The former counsellors of Charles V, the “small fry,” the _marmousets_ as the great lords dubbed them in disdain, Olivier de Clisson, Bureau de la Rivière, Le Bègue de Vilaines, John de Novian, and John de Montaigu, reassumed, as ministers of state, the direction of affairs. The new administration was wise and economical, and stood for internal order and foreign peace, but through it the king only became the more prodigal; having no longer the pleasures and distractions of war, those of the fête and tourney became necessary to him, and these diversions now never ceased.[b] Prodigious sums were needed for the “incomparable” fêtes in which Charles VI gloried, and which attracted to Paris the flower of the knights and noble ladies of all Christendom. This vast concourse of strangers, the stir, the joyful tumult, the dazzling shows intoxicated the young nobility and even the people of Paris; the Parisians had their share of the rain of gold and recovered in one way what was taken from them in another. In the first days of May, 1389, the most magnificent tournament which had ever been seen was held at St. Denis on the occasion of the knighting of the two sons of the late duke Louis of Anjou, the eldest of whom, Louis II, duke of Anjou and count of Provence, was preparing to set out to assert his claims to the kingdom of Naples against the heir of Charles of Durazzo. Charles VI had endeavoured to realise the most brilliant descriptions of the romances and to present to the feudal world a complete type of chivalric splendours. The ceremonial of initiation to the “holy order of chivalry,” which had almost fallen into disuse since the adoption of the custom of conferring the order on the field of battle, was reproduced with scrupulous exactness.