Charles liked change of place. He was often not so much travelling as making a progress; now to join the King for some great tournament; now to visit King Rene, at Tarascon, where he had a study of his own and saw all manner of interesting things--Oriental curios, King Rene painting birds, and, what particularly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf jester, whose skull-cap was no bigger than an orange.[51] Sometimes the journeys were set about on horseback in a large party, with the _fourriers_ sent forward to prepare a lodging at the next stage. We find almost Gargantuan details of the provision made by these officers against the duke's arrival, of eggs and butter and bread, cheese and peas and chickens, pike and bream and barbel, and wine both white and red.[52] Sometimes he went by water in a barge, playing chess or tables with a friend in the pavilion, or watching other vessels as they went before the wind.[53] Children ran along the bank, as they do to this day on the Crinan Canal; and when Charles threw in money they would dive and bring it up.[54] As he looked on their exploits, I wonder whether that room of gold and silk and worsted came back into his memory, with the device of little children in the river, and the sky full of birds? He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with his brother Angouleme in bringing back the library of their grandfather Charles V., when Bedford put it up for sale in London.[55] The duchess had a library of her own; and we hear of her borrowing romances from ladies in attendance on the blue-stocking Margaret of Scotland.[56] Not only were books collected, but new books were written at the court of Blois. The widow of one Jean Fougere, a book-binder, seems to have done a number of odd commissions for the bibliophilous count. She it was who received three vellum skins to bind the duchess's Book of Hours, and who was employed to prepare parchment for the use of the duke's scribes. And she it was who bound in vermilion leather the great manuscript of Charles's own poems, which was presented to him by his secretary, Anthony Astesan, with the text in one column, and Astesan's Latin version in the other.[57]