Towards noon, when the letter had been sealed, Jeanne and her escort set out for Chinon.[573] She went to the King, just as in those days there went to him the sons of poor widows of Azincourt and Verneuil riding lame horses found in some meadow,--fifteen-year-old lads coming forth from their ruined towers to mend their own fortunes and those of France; just as Loyalty, Desire, and Famine went to him.[574] Charles VII was France, the image and symbol of France. Yet he was but a poor creature withal, the eleventh of the miserable children born to the mad Charles VI and his prolific Bavarian Queen.[575] He had grown up among disasters, and had survived his four elder brethren. But he himself was badly bred, knock-kneed, and bandy-legged;[576] a veritable king's son, if his looks only were considered, and yet it was impossible to swear to his descent.[577] Through his presence on the bridge at Montereau on that day, when, according to a wise man, it were better to have died than to have been there,[578] he had grown pale and trembling, looking dully at everything going to wrack and ruin around him. After their victory of Verneuil and their partial conquest of Maine, the English had left him four years' respite. But his friends, his defenders, his deliverers had alike been terrible. Pious and humble, well content with his plain wife, he led a sad, anxious life in his chateaux on the Loire. He was timid. And well might he be so, for no sooner did he show friendship towards or confidence in one of the nobility than that noble was killed. The Constable de Richemont and the Sire de la Tremouille had drowned the Lord de Giac after a mock trial.[579] The Marshal de Boussac, by order of the Constable, had slain Lecamus de Beaulieu with even less ceremony. Lecamus was riding his mule in a meadow on the bank of the Clain, when he was set upon, thrown down, his head split open, and his hand cut off. The favourite's mule was taken back to the King.[580] The Constable de Richemont had given Charles in his stead La Tremouille, a very barrel of a man, a toper, a kind of Gargantua who devoured the country. La Tremouille having driven away Richemont, the King kept La Tremouille until the Constable, of whom he was greatly in dread, should return. And indeed so meek and fearful a prince had reason to dread this Breton, always defeated, always furious, bitter, ferocious, whose awkwardness and violence created an impression of rude frankness.[581] [Footnote 573: _Ibid._, p. 56.] [Footnote 574: Bueil, _Le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. 32, and Tringant, xv; Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, ch. cxxxviii.] [Footnote 575: Vallet de Viriville, _Isabeau de Baviere_, 1859, in 8vo, and _Notes sur l'etat civil des princes et princesses nes d'Isabeau de Baviere_ in the _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, vol. xix, pp. 473-482.] [Footnote 576: Th. Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_, vol. i, p. 312. Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. ii, p. 178.]